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KEEBAN 


HBb flEOtotn llBalmer 

Resurrection Rock 
The Breath of Scandal 
Keeban 

In collaboration with 

Wiliam 

The Blind Man’s Eyes 
The Indian Drum 




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K E E B A N 


BY 


EDWIN 


JjJALMER 


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BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
1923 












Copyright, 1923, 

By Edwin Balmer. ' 

All rights reserved 
Published April, 1923 


V 





in the United States of America 

/ 


APR 26 '23 ‘ ^ 

©C1A70432 6‘— 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I My Brother Finds Himself in Two Places 

at Once . i 

II And Escapes from Both.14 

III I Have Encounter by the River .... 31 

IV I Sit in on Fate ..48 

V The Underworld Intrudes.60 

VI And I Fail to Prevent a Bump-Off ... 72 

VII I Keep My Own Counsel.87 

VIII A Lady Discredits Me.98 

IX I Seek the Underworld.107 

X And Learn the Ways of Its Logic . . . 116 

XI The Thieves’ Ball.134 

XII I Discover “The Queer”.153 

XIII And Learn the Soothing Effects of Fond 

du Lac Twins.173 

XIV I Take Government Orders.185 

* 

XV In Which I Assist a Get-away .... 196 

XVI I Walk into a Parlor.210 

XVII Chiefly Devoted to a Gas Called KX . . 219 

XVIII Doris Appears and Vanishes.239 

v 














VI 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

XIX I Hear of the Glass Room ...... 248 

XX Doris and I Are Taken to It. 256 

XXI Doris Enters the Glass Room. 267 

XXII A Croaking and Finis. 287 








KEEBAN 


I » 
































KEEBAN 


i 

MY BROTHER FINDS HIMSELF IN TWO PLACES AT 
ONCE. 

The quick, quiet unlocking and then the clos¬ 
ing of the hall door on the floor below told me 
that Jerry had come in; so I sat up, roused as I 
always was when I felt him about. He put life 
into any place, — even into an Astor Street mar¬ 
ble mansion in the somnolence of two-thirty on 
a morning after everybody else has gone to bed. 

Since my light was on, although it was only a 
shaded reading lamp and although the double 
blinds before my window must have prevented 
more than the merest glint outside, I was sure 
Jerry had noticed from the street that I was 
awake; for he notices everything; and every¬ 
thing bears to him a meaning which he has the 
clear head and the nervous energy to make out. 
I never realized, till I began analyzing Jerry, 
how much more you need than a brain for think¬ 
ing; to get anywhere, you must have a sort of 
habitual energy to tackle incidents and carry 


2 


KEEBAN 


them in your mind beyond the first, simple regis¬ 
try of the observed fact. 

Take that evening we came home late to¬ 
gether, when my cousin Janet with her new hus¬ 
band was stopping with us. They’d arrived 
only that day, and Jerry hadn’t seen Janet since 
she married and he had never met Lew Hollings 
at all or heard anything about him except that 
they were married and were to visit us. It was a 
very hot night and they’d gone to their rooms 
early to rest from the train. We’d given them 
our best guest rooms, — the pair of bedrooms on 
the third floor in front with a dressing room in 
between. I noticed, as we approached the house, 
that the dressing room light was burning and 
the bedrooms both were dark with the windows 
open. Somebody’d forgotten the light; that’s 
all it meant to me. Jerry looked up at the house. 

“Why, that’s too bad, Steve!” he said. 
“ That ” was so plain to him that it didn’t occur 
to him that he needed to explain when he fin¬ 
ished. “I thought Janet and Hollings were 
getting along all right.” 

“ They are,” I said. “ They’re perfectly 
happy. What gave you the sudden idea they’re 
not? ” 

“ Oh, closed doors on a night when it’s eighty- 


IN TWO PLACES AT ONCE 


3 


eight and no breeze, Steve. Neither has a door 
open, even to the dressing room; they don’t 
know the light’s on. They’ve each shut them¬ 
selves in one room without opening a door even 
for a current of air to-night.” 

“You’re crazy, Jerry,” I said. “I had din¬ 
ner with them. There’s nothing the matter.” 
That was what my people thought too until 
Janet and Lew separated, openly, a couple of 
weeks later. 

Jerry came into my room and, as soon as I 
saw him, I flung my book to the foot of the bed; 
for it was perfectly plain, even to my sort of 
wits, that something mighty amazing to him had 
happened. He was pale and his blue eyes 
looked positively big; he has fine eyes, Jerry; 
you like them, though they take hold of you and 
seem to look through you; the reason you like 
them, in spite of this, is that while finding out 
something of you, they grant you a good deal of 
him. So they told me now that Jerry was 
afraid; and, though we have been companions 
for twenty-eight years — that is, since we were 
babies — and though that companionship in¬ 
cludes service in the Argonne, I had never seen 
him so afraid before. 

He’d come upstairs with his overcoat on, over 


KEEBAN 


4 

his evening clothes, for he’d been at Ina Spar¬ 
ling’s wedding, and he hadn’t even dropped his 
hat downstairs. 

“ How long you been home, Steve? ” he asked, 
coming beside me. 

“ Since half-past twelve,” I said. 

“Awake all the time? ” 

“ Yes, Jerry.” 

“ Anybody call for me? ” 

“ No.” 

“ You’ve not heard the ’phone at all? ” 

“ No. What’s the matter, old fellow? ” 

“Dot! ” said Jerry, staring down at me with¬ 
out now seeing me at all. 

“Dorothy Crewe?” I asked, in the way I 
have of asking perfectly obvious questions. 

“ Yes, Steve.” 

“Oh; you’ve quarrelled?” I said, imagining 
I saw a light. “ That’s it.” 

“ I’d trade a good many quarrels for what 
happened — probably, Steve.” 

“ To her? ” I said again, stupidly. 

He did not exactly nod his head but he in¬ 
clined it a trifle lower. “ The damnedest thing, 
Steve; the queerest affair!” he said, looking 
quickly at me again. He brushed my book to 
the floor and dropped on the foot of the bed and 


IN TWO PLACES AT ONCE 5 

sat there, staring straight ahead without speak¬ 
ing for a minute while he listened for sounds in 
the street or below; but there was nothing. 

He swung about and demanded of me sud¬ 
denly, “ You noticed Dot to-night? ” 

“ Of course, old fellow. Besides, she was 
with you most of the time.” 

He jerked, wincing at that; and Jerry’s not 
jerky. He’s excitable and capable, I’ve always 
felt, even of violence. But he possesses not one 
bad nerve; he might hit in anger but he would 
hit perfectly steadily if he hit to kill. 

“ Yes, of course she was with me. I was re¬ 
sponsible for her to-night. Did you notice what 
she was wearing, Steve? ” 

“ Blue dress, wasn’t it — pale blue? She cer¬ 
tainly was stunning, Jerry.” 

“ Her necklace, Steve; didn’t you see it? 
Those damned diamonds and sapphires her 
father brought back from abroad with him! ” 

“ Of course I saw them. So — she lost them 
to-night, did she? Or they were stolen? That’s 
it? ” But I realized by this time it was far more 
than that. 

“ Steve, let’s go over it just as it happened,” 
Jerry entreated. “ When did you leave the 
Sparlings’? ” 


6 


KEEBAN 


“ Twelve o’clock. Ten minutes after,” I 
added more precisely and he did not question 
me further on that; he knows I always keep 
track of time. 

“ You saw Dot about midnight? ” 

“ Within a quarter of an hour of the time I 
left, Jerry.” 

“ When did you see me last? ” 

He tried not to — I thought — but he could 
not help bending toward me a little and he could 
not keep his voice from going a little up and 
down. 

“Why, at the door when I went, Jerry!” I 
said, my own voice cracking a little, excited 
from him. 

“ At the door of the Sparlings at ten minutes 
after twelve, Steve? ” he begged of me. 

“ Why, yes, Jerry.” 

“ I, Steve? You saw me there? ” 

“ Why not? What is it, Jerry? I’ve told you 
I did.” 

“ You know me; or you ought to know me, if 
any one in the world does. And you wouldn’t 
joke about it with me, would you, Steve? If all 
the rest of them were doing it, if they’d sworn 
you in, too, in the hoax, you’d tell me the truth 
now, wouldn’t you? For you see Dot’s taken! 


IN TWO PLACES AT ONCE 7 

If she’s not really taken, I believe she is; that’s 
the same to me! Oh, I know you wouldn’t be in 
on anything like that against me! ” 

“ Dot taken? Where? How? What is it 
that’s happened?” 

“ That’s what no one knows, Steve. Oh — 
we’ve got to go over it just as it came on. Up 
to half-past eleven, you know everything. That 
is, there’s nothing in particular to tell. We 
were all at the Sparlings’ dancing about after 
the wedding; about half-past eleven people be¬ 
gan drifting over to the Drake to Casoway’s 
dance. Dot and I meant to go; with Jim and 
Laura Townsend in their car. In the coat room 
I was held up a few minutes finding my things; 
this was still at the Sparlings’, Steve. When I 
came down to the carriage door, I couldn’t find 
Dot. The Townsends were gone; somebody 
said she’d gone with them, so I followed on in 
the next machine for the Drake. Don’t know 
whose it was; just some people said, 1 Going to 
the Drake? Get in.’ So I got in and soon as I 
got to the Drake went on a hunt for Dot but 
couldn’t find her right away. Awful jam there, 
Steve; couldn’t find the Townsends for twenty 
minutes; then they said they hadn’t brought 
Dot. Thought maybe the Westmans might 


KEEBAN 


8 

have; they came over at the same time. So I 
chased up Sally Westman; she hadn’t brought 
Dot; but I ran on Tom Downs just coming in; 
this was twelve o’clock then, Steve. 

“ ‘ Hello, Jerry,’ he said to me. ‘ How the 
devil’d you beat me over here? ’ 

“ ‘ When’d you leave the Sparlings’? ’ I said. 

“ ‘ Just now; oh, three minutes ago.’ 

“ 1 Was Dorothy Crewe over there? ’ I said. 

“ ‘ When I left?’ Tom said. 4 Why, cer¬ 
tainly; she was with you. You said you were 
coming over; but not right away. But you seem 
to have passed me.’ 

“ ‘ I’ve been here half an hour,’ I said, and he 
laughed and went on. Thought I was joking 
and I thought he simply remembered seeing me 
with Dot before I came over and he got mixed 
on his time. I wasn’t sure even that Dot had 
stayed at the Sparlings’, so I asked some more 
people who had just come over; and they’d just 
left her at the Sparlings’ with me, Steve! ” 

I didn’t try to say anything now; he was try¬ 
ing to tell me as quickly as he could. 

“ They were positive about it and wondered 
how I got over so quick. Steve, I tell you it 
sent a shiver through me right then. I decided 
to go back to the Sparlings’ to get her; so I 


IN TWO PLACES AT ONCE 9 

’phoned and Gibson, Sparling’s man, you know, 
answered. I know his voice. I said: 

“ ‘ Is Miss Crewe still there, Gibson? ’ 

il 1 Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘ Just in the next room.’ 

“ ‘ Let me speak with her,’ I said. 

“ 1 Yes, sir,’ said Gibson. 4 Who shall I say? ’ 

“ ‘ Fanneal,’ I said. 

“ ‘ Mr. Stephen Fanneal? ’ said Gibson. 

“ I thought everybody was going crazy; how 
could Gibson mix up your voice and mine, 
Steve? ‘Jerry Fanneal,’ I told him, only to 
have him come back with a ‘ What, sir? ’ So I 
told him again; and he gave me, ‘But Mr. 
Jeremy Fanneal is here, sir.’ 

“ That got a ‘ what ’ out of me, Steve. ‘ Right 
there now? ’ I got after Gibson. 

“ ‘ Yes, sir.’ 

“ ‘ You can see him, Gibson? ’ 

“ ‘Yes, sir; just this minute he passed in the 
hall with Miss Crewe.’ 

“ ‘ Get him to the ’phone then, right away,’ I 
said. 

“‘What name shall I give him, sir?’ said 
Gibson. 

“ ‘Never mind the name. Tell him he’s 
wanted on the ’phone.’ And then, by God, Steve, 
he talked to me! ” 


10 


KEEBAN 


I was leaning toward Jerry now. “ Wno? ” 

“ Myself, Steve! Don’t look at me as if I’m a 
loon. I tell you that fellow who came to the 
’phone gave me a jump higher than yours. He 
didn’t talk exactly like me; I mean, didn’t say 
words I’d have said — quite; but he said ’em 
the way I speak, Steve. After I’d heard him, 
‘ Who in the devil are you? ’ I said. 

“‘Jerry Fanneal,’ he said, cool. ‘Who’s 
this?’ 

“ Of course that left me without a comeback! 
‘You’re with Dorothy Crewe?’ I said. ‘Let 
me talk to her! ’ 

“ ‘ All right,’ he said; and like a fool I 
waited three minutes for somebody to come. Of 
course nobody did; and I couldn’t rouse any¬ 
body else; he’d left the receiver off. But in four 
minutes I came to and grabbed a cab and got 
over to the Sparlings’ to find I’d just gone half 
a minute before with Dorothy. I’d taken her 
alone in a cab for the Drake; they wanted to 
know what was the matter; why I’d come back? 
Where was Dorothy? I didn’t wait to explain; 
I cut back to the Drake; but she didn’t come; 
and I didn’t come! I mean the other fellow that 
was me never showed up anywhere. Nobody 


11 


IN TWO PLACES AT ONCE 

saw more of us than me after that. There I was, 
all right; where was Dorothy? 

u By God, Steve; it’s near three now; and she 
never came; she’s not gone home or anywhere 
else where she would go. If it wasn’t for those 
damned diamonds and sapphires they hung on 
her to-night, I might believe there’s a chance for, 
a joke somewhere. But she’s a couple of hun¬ 
dred thousand on her neck to-night; or anyway, 
she had, Steve. And the papers were telling all 
about it; 1 Harrison Crewe brings to Chicago 
royal jewels’ and all that stuff; you saw it, 
Steve. — I’ve been to the Crewes’; just came 
from them. They don’t think anything’s hap¬ 
pened ; nothing’s ever happened in their family, 
you know. Things only happen to other people 
— things like what may be happening to Doro¬ 
thy, Steve! Of course I couldn’t make myself 
awfully clear; all they feel what has happened is 
that Dorothy, probably for good reasons of her 
own, dropped me and went off from the Spar¬ 
lings’ with somebody else and I’m overexcited 
about it. They don’t think it’s time yet to call in 
the police. You know them; I worried them 
but not to the point of having in the police and 
the newspapers on an affair of their own. But I 
called headquarters on my way out of their 


12 


KEEBAN 


building, from the porter’s room under their 
apartment. Told police to call me here; so 
you’ll take any call for me, won’t you? I’m 
going out on the street again and I’ll ’phone you 
for report within every fifteen minutes. Have it 
now, Steve? ” 

“ Yes,” I said, to try to help him. It wasn’t 
true, yet truer, perhaps than “no”; for I did 
have the essential fact which was that he tremen¬ 
dously feared that harm had come to Dorothy 
Crewe through an extraordinary event which 
he, himself, could not yet make out. 

“Get dressed then, Steve; and stay here for 
me.” 

I stood up; he stared me over again and 
started for the door but caught at my telephone 
on the stand in the corner. It is an extension 
of one of the instruments downstairs and the bell 
is below; but it can be plainly heard in my 
room, especially at night. It had not even 
jingled, I’m sure. So Jerry’s grab at the re¬ 
ceiver was solely from his impatience; and 
when he had it up, no one was on the line; he 
had to give central the order: “ Police; central 
detective bureau.” When he had them, “ This 
is Jeremy Fanneal, of-” he gave our tele¬ 

phone number and house number on Astor 



IN TWO PLACES AT ONCE 13 

Street. “ I called you a while ago asking you to 

call me immediately if you- What? ” Then 

I was trying to get to him; but he heard it first. 
“Steve! They have her! They found her in 
the street in her blue dress and her light hair! 
Dot, Steve! Her necklace is gone but there’s 
marks. — Oh, Steve, they’re waiting for me to 
come and identify her.” 

I took hold of him. “ She’s dead? ” 

“They think so; or as good as dead.” 

I held to him. “ You wait for me,” I said, 
“ or I’ll not let you go. You’ll save time in the 
end. Your word, Jerry.” 

He looked at me straight. “ You’ll jump, 
Steve,” was all he said. 


II 


AND ESCAPES FROM BOTH. 

I GOT into my clothes in a minute; Jerry 
hadn’t been able to remain in the house, but I 
found him walking up and down beside the cab 
which he had kept. 

“ Chicago Avenue police station,” he said to 
the driver, and he was in ahead of me. “ They 
took her there,” he told me, “ from where they 
found her — on West Division Street near the 
river.” 

He had no doubt whatever that she was Doro¬ 
thy Crewe — his Dot whom he had loved; and, 
for what had come to her, he was holding him¬ 
self guilty. 

“ Steve, she thought she was going with me! ” 
he cried out. “ It was my Keeban! There is a 
Keeban, you see; my Keeban took her away and 
killed her! ” 

I jerked in spite of myself. You, of course, 
cannot understand why without this word of 
explanation. Jerry and I, as most of our ac- 


AND ESCAPES FROM BOTH 15 

quaintances know — and the Chicago papers, in 
their occasional discussions of the Fanneals, 
always veiledly refer to the fact — are not blood 
brothers. It is a perfectly evident fact to any 
one who has seen both of us; for I am the Fan- 
neal type, — tall and with big bones, strong and 
spare in flesh but slow moving; my features are 
Rhode Island Yankee transplanted to Illinois, 
regular enough but too angular; too much nose, 
a bit too much chin, also. My hair is sandy 
brown; my eyes blue. Jerry’s eyes are blue but 
mine have no quality of the living color of his; 
when I set the word down, it suggests that our 
eyes, at least, are alike, whereas we are no¬ 
where more different. Mine are merchants’ 
eyes, come down from ten recorded generations 
of cautious traders; Jerry’s are — who knows? 
Jerry’s long, graceful body is not so strong but 
twice as quick as mine; Jerry’s clear, dark skin 
and his soft, black hair on his daredevil head; 
his small-boned but strong hands; the laugh and 
the lilt of him and his elan are — French, per¬ 
haps? Or Spanish, or Italian? All three to¬ 
gether or none, but some other marvellous blend 
of energetic, passionate people? No one can 
say, least of all, Jerry himself. For one day, 
when I was about two years old and my nurse 


i6 


KEEBAN 


had me playing carefully by myself in a selected 
and remote spot in Lincoln Park, Jerry ap¬ 
peared under the trees and ran across the grass 
to play with me. Of course my nurse immedi¬ 
ately jumped to protect me from contamination 
from a dark stranger, though it is remembered 
that he was clean and nicely clothed; she tried 
to send him away and, when he wouldn’t go but 
eluded her and hugged me — and I hugged him 
— she parted us and tried to take him back to 
his mother. But she couldn’t find his mother or 
any one else who claimed him; she couldn’t find 
even a policeman. (Obviously I had no mem¬ 
ory of my own about this but was told it long 
afterwards.) Then my mother was driven by 
that way and found Jerry and me together. 

It seemed that mother considered my nurse to 
blame for Jerry becoming detached from his 
own party; my mother always fixed blame for 
occurrences; also, she always felt responsibility. 
She felt that now for Jerry and took him in her 
carriage and brought him home where she kept 
him isolated in a guest room while she had the 
police notified and advertisements put in the 
papers. She said she would persist in efforts to 
return Jerry to his parents until she got results; 
the authorities — she thought — were too care- 


AND ESCAPES FROM BOTH 17 

less about such matters and too soon gave up, 
and merely sent a child to an institution. Ac¬ 
cordingly, Jerry remained at our house; and 
then, when my mother’s efforts brought no re¬ 
sult, she still kept him. A child’s specialist 
examined him and found him reassuringly 
sound, with excellent development, no ascer¬ 
tainable defects or hereditary taints, all senses 
acute, and decidedly “ bright.” Apparently, he 
was about two years old; “ of European parent¬ 
age ” was as far as the doctor would commit 
himself. 

“ French,” my mother decided. “ He says his 
name is ‘Jerry.’ I don’t think that it is his 
name; it probably represents 4 mon cheri.’ ” 

“ Spanish,” my father always said, for no 
reason, I believe, other than he thought my 
mother was too positive and also he particularly 
liked the Spanish. They couldn’t help liking 
Jerry, who knew, besides his name, only the 
usual hundred or so ordinary words which a 
child picks up first; English words, they were, 
at first spoken with a marked French accent, my 
mother said. 

So they let Jerry and me play together; I was 
an only child. A companion, therefore, was 
“good for me”; and we have been together 


18 KEEBAN 

ever since. I cannot remember a time when 
there was not Jerry; he cannot consciously re¬ 
call any home previous to ours or any one pre¬ 
vious to us, — besides the nameless “ mama ” 
and “ papa ” whom he asked for, at first, and 
“ Keeban.” 

Keeban, apparently, was another child; a 
brother or sister; or perhaps only a playmate. 
Jerry could not describe him, of course; he 
could only go about looking for and asking for 
Keeban. Naturally, as time went on, my mother 
and father replaced Jerry’s own nameless mama 
and papa; but I never replaced Keeban; and 
Jerry never forgot him. As we became older, 
Jerry’s idea of Keeban became at the same time 
more imaginary and more definite; for Keeban 
changed from some one for whom Jerry 
searched to some one always with us, — an im¬ 
aginary companion, a third to us two, interesting, 
always up to something and most convenient to 
accuse when we were caught in heinous wrong. 

I can remember, when we were about seven, 
asking Jerry what Keeban was like. I did not 
consider that Keeban represented a real person; 
he was, to me, merely one of Jerry’s interesting 
imaginations. 


AND ESCAPES FROM BOTH 19 

“ Keeban,” said Jerry, “ is another me. Don’t 
you never have a Keeban, too? ” 

“ No,” I said; but I had Jerry’s — that other 
imaginary boy, the duplicate of Jerry, who came 
to see us, whom we played with, who did extra¬ 
ordinary things and went away. Then, gradu¬ 
ally, we dropped him; that is, Jerry ceased to 
mention him and we stopped having him 
“ come.” I think I forgot him until we were in 
Princeton University together; a lot of us had 
been to New York over the week-end and after 
we’d been back a few days, Jim Townsend 
dropped into Jerry’s and my room, when Jerry 
was out, and said: 

“ Steve, I wouldn’t say a word against Jerry 
to anybody but you; but you ought to know how 
queer he is sometimes.” 

“ When?” I said. 

“ Last Saturday in New York; I was down 
on the east side with a bunch of our class, just 
knocking about the ordinary way, when we ran 
on Jerry in a rum lot, I tell you. He pretended 
not to recognize any of us; in fact, he was in a 
bunch that tried to rough us; we had rather a 
go. When it was over, I got at Jerry, he made 
me so damn mad going in with that lot of muck¬ 
ers against us. I told him what I thought and 


20 KEEBAN 

he looked at me as cool as could be. ‘ Who do 
you think I am?’ he asked me, as though I 
didn’t know him in Bowery ‘suitings’; for he 
had on the whole get-up of his friends, Steve. 
I gave him up, I tell you; and he wasn’t drunk, 
either. Since he didn’t know me, I decided I 
wouldn’t know him, next time I saw him here; 
so I passed him outside just now without speak¬ 
ing. He came after me and asked why. I told 
him; and what do you suppose he did? Denied 
he’d even been on the east side Saturday; he 
said I hadn’t seen him; that wasn’t he.” 

“ It wasn’t, Jim,” I said. “ Jerry was with me 
all Saturday on Broadway. We never got east 
of Fifth Avenue at all.” 

“That’s right, Steve. Stand up for him; I 
would, too,” Jim said; and nothing I could say 
would shake him that he’d seen Jerry. He was 
so sure about it, and so were the rest of the bunch 
who’d been with him, that it got me wondering, 
particularly when I remembered later that Jerry 
hadn’t stayed with me all Saturday; we were 
separated for a couple of hours. 

I said nothing to him about it; and it soon 
blew over until, a couple of months later, an¬ 
other bunch of fellows from the college ran into 
Jerry on the same side of town, but peacefully, 


AND ESCAPES FROM BOTH 


21 


this time; so peacefully, in fact, that he bor¬ 
rowed a hundred dollars from them. Said he 
would be in trouble down there unless he had 
the money. I heard about this from several 
men and then from Jerry. 

“ Tell me straight, Steve; do you believe I do 
queer things? ” he asked me suddenly one night. 

“ Of course not,” I said. 

“ I know you wouldn’t think it when I’m my¬ 
self; but do you think there’s a chance that 
sometimes I’m not myself and I go queer — like 
that fight with Jim Townsend a few weeks ago; 
and borrowing a hundred dollars from Davis in 
New York last Saturday. I swear to you, Steve, 
I haven’t the slightest remembrance of even 
seeing Fred or any of the fellows with him who 
saw me and saw him hand me the hundred.” 

“ They must have gone queer themselves,” I 
said. 

“ No,” said Jerry. “ What they say is true. I 
don’t remember seeing them; but I feel it.” 

“ Feel what? ” I said. 

“ That they did meet me; for there’s another 
me about, Steve; yt>u know I’ve felt that. I 
know now he must be one of two things — either 
another personality living in me which turns 
Jerry Fanneal off, sometimes, and turns on — 


22 


KEEBAN 


Keeban, Steve, like the dual personality cases in 
the psychology books; or he must be a real, 
physical duplicate of me — Keeban; that’s pos¬ 
sible, too, of course. But the way ’I feel him 
usually is another way; and the one way he 
can’t possibly be; he seems to be me going on 
and growing up and living my life, as it would 
have been, if I’d never come to you, Steve. So, 
that way, sometimes he seems more me than my¬ 
self; for I seem to be somebody else and he, 
when I think of him that way, seems to be me.” 

We couldn’t get any further than that; Jerry 
and I went to New York the next day and poked 
about the district where Davis claimed to have 
met Jerry, but we couldn’t find trace of anybody 
like him. Jerry paid the hundred to Davis, I 
remember; he considered himself in some way 
responsible and soon the incident passed off as 
the fight had; Jerry lived it down and nothing 
like it occurred again for years, until this night 
when Jerry, at the Drake, talked to himself at 
the Sparlings and he went back to the Sparlings 
to learn that he had just that moment gone out 
with Dorothy Crewe. 

If what Jerry had just told me was exactly 
true, there was — of course — no explanation of 
it but one; there existed, physically, another 


AND ESCAPES FROM BOTH 23 

Jerry. I could not say to myself that Jerry had 
not told me the truth as he knew it; but I could 
not help wondering how much of it he knew. 
Was he actually at the Drake at the same time 
“ he ” also was at the Sparlings’; could he have 
talked to “ himself ”; and done the other things 
he related? Or was there, living outside of him 
most of the time, Keeban — the man he would 
have become had he never come to us — who 
occasionally, at long intervals, could take com¬ 
mand of Jerry’s body? That idea had never 
seized me until to-night as I sat beside him in 
the cab which was hurrying us to the police sta¬ 
tion where Dorothy Crewe lay; for now I no 
longer doubted, either, that she was Dot. 

Ahead on the dark and still street showed 
lighted windows and a police ambulance stood 
end to the curb; we saw it was empty and so we 
went at once into the station. 

In a little, dingy room a girl lay on the 
stretcher by which she had been carried; an 
ambulance doctor and two police detectives 
bent over her. The police turned to us when 
we entered. 

Jerry stepped ahead of me but over his shoul¬ 
der I saw Dorothy Crewe. She lay almost as if 
she were asleep in her pale blue dress in which 


KEEBAN 


24 

she had danced that night; her hair was beauti¬ 
ful as ever — corn-color hair, little disarranged; 
her face and neck and arms were white and run 
with red where cuts and scratches showed. 
There were signs of street soil on her dress but 
none on her body; some one had washed them 
away. 

“She’s not dead!” Jerry cried; then, in a 
whisper, “ How is she? ” 

Said the ambulance surgeon, “ We don’t 
know.” 

“ But she’s not dead! ” 

“No; not yet, anyway.” 

Jerry’s face hovered over hers as he searched 
hers; then, very softly, he kissed her. “You’ll 
not die! ” he whispered to her; then, to the sur¬ 
geon, “ Don’t let her die, doctor,” he said. 

“What’s happened here?” I asked the offi¬ 
cers. 

It seemed that she’d been found in the street 
by a patrolman walking his beat; he thought 
she was dead so he sent her to the station. Now, 
having found life in her, the doctor was for tak¬ 
ing her to a hospital; but he honestly thought 
it no use at all. 

“ What do you know? ” the police came back 
at us. 


AND ESCAPES FROM BOTH 25 

“ She’s Dorothy Crewe,” Jerry told them, and 
added her father’s name and number of his 
home. “ To-night I took her to a dance at the 
Sparlings’. She had a necklace — here.” 

Gently he touched her throat where were 
marks made by him who had snatched at her 
necklace and torn it away. 

“Diamonds and sapphires,” Jerry went on 
and seemed to forget what he said. 

A police captain named Mullaney kept at me. 
“When did she leave Mr. Sparling’s? ” 

“ About half-past twelve,” I said. “ She was 
going from there to a dance at the Drake hotel 
given by Mr. Casoway. She never arrived 
there.” 

“ Go on,” said the captain. 

Jerry went on. “ She left the Sparlings’ 
wearing, besides what she has on, a blue silk 
cloak and a necklace of diamonds and sapphires 
on a platinum chain, which her father brought 
her from Paris.” 

“ Perhaps you’ve read about it,” I put in. 
“ They were supposed to be worth a quarter 
million.” 

“I suppose,” said Jerry, “they were gone 
when you found her.” 

“ She had on her a quarter million in stones! ” 


26 


KEEBAN 


the captain repeated. “ Well, that makes it some 
plainer, sir. They was off her when we found 
her. Now go right on, Mr. Fanneal. She left 
Mr. Sparling’s big house on the Drive to go to 
the Drake hotel at half-past twelve, you say? 
She didn’t go off, at that hour, alone? ” 

Jerry swung quickly and looked at me. “ I’ll 
tell ’em, Steve! ” 

“ Go ahead,” I said. God knows, I didn’t 
want to. I had no idea how to tell it; my 
thoughts, on the subject of Keeban, were abso¬ 
lutely a blob, just then. 

“ She did not leave alone, Captain,” Jerry 
told. “ There is some confusion over who she 
went with. That was why, when she did not 
come to the Drake or return home, we became 
alarmed and I telephoned to you. Some people 
thought she went away with me; but she did 
not.” 

“ Go on,” said Mullaney again. 

“ You’ll find a good many that say she went 
with me, Captain; Gibson, the doorman, and 
probably Mrs. Sparling and some of the guests. 
But it wasn’t me, Captain.” 

Mullaney squinted his eyes as he looked at 
Jerry and then he looked at me. 


AND ESCAPES FROM BOTH 27 

“ Where was you, Mr. Steve Fanneal?” he 
challenged. 

“ I’d gone home, then.” 

“Then where was you?” he swung back to 
Jerry. 

“ I’d gone to the Drake.” 

“ Leavin’ your partner at Mr. Sparling’s? I 
thought you said you took her there.” 

“ I did.” 

“ Then why didn’t you take her away? ” 

“ I’ll tell him, Jerry,” I said; for I felt the 
sudden strength of his suspicion. At first, he 
had spoken alike to Jerry and to me; but now 
he treated me and my word in one way and Jerry 
and his word in another. I was the known, ac¬ 
tual son of Austin Fanneal; Jerry, as everybody 
knew, was the waif of any blood from anywhere.' 

“ You can’t, Steve,” Jerry warned. 

But there, like the fool I was, I started to tell. 

Two big men in uniform came in and each 
took an arm of Jerry. 

The doctor was doing things during most of 
this time; now and then I noticed a hypodermic 
needle. 

Dorothy Crewe breathed and her eyelids flut¬ 
tered ; she opened her eyes. 

Only the grimy ceiling was in her sight; she 


KEEBAN 


28 

stared at this and then saw a blue coat, and some 
realization and remembrance began to reach 
her; and she jerked and shivered violently. 

Jerry started to her, pulling the two big men 
with him. The motion made her turn her eyes 
and she saw Jerry; and she screamed! 

It sent me shaking; it dropped Jerry down, 
hiding his face. She was convulsing in a spasm 

of hysteria. “He! He! He! He!-” She 

seemed to try to cry “ He did it ” but she could 
only scream “ he, he,” until it went into a crazy 
laugh. 

The doctor tried to calm her; the big men 
dragged Jerry away. He was making no resist¬ 
ance, God knows; he was limp. Could a man 
go against a thing more awful than he’d just 
met? Here was the girl he loved; she’d trusted 
herself to him and she believed that, for the dia¬ 
monds about her neck, he’d attacked her! 

She told something more in that scream of a 
laugh; she told a little, at least, of how she had 
struggled before she’d been strangled and 
knocked senseless and thrown into the street. 
And she had thought Jerry did it! 

I stepped along beside him. “ Keeban,” he 
whispered desperately to me. “ You see there’s 
Keeban.” 


AND ESCAPES FROM BOTH 29 

It meant nothing at all to the police. To me? 
What did I know? 

“ Go back to her, Steve,” Jerry begged. “ But, 
old fellow! ” he held me. 

“ What? ” 

“ You’ll believe there’s Keeban? Think, 
Steve! If you don’t, you’ll believe I did that! ” 

“No! I know you couldn’t.” 

“ And you’ll keep on knowing? You’ll al¬ 
ways know? ” 

“ Jerry! ” I cried. 

“ Your word, Steve? ” 

“ Of course.” 

“ Go back, now, to her.” 

I left him to be dragged, limp, down the cor¬ 
ridor between the big, uniformed men. 

In the grimy room, Dorothy Crewe had lost 
consciousness again; she was quiet; there was 
nothing I could do for her. 

A pair of shots sounded; a couple more, 
almost together; and yells. 

I knew the trouble before they shouted it to 
us; Jerry had got away. Instantly, without a 
jerk of warning, he had sprung from their hands 
as they dragged him, all limp the second before; 
he was out of a door and gone; and their loud 
bullets bagged them nothing. 


KEEBAN 


30 

They were all about the streets and alleys 
searching for him when I came out to the ambu¬ 
lance beside the stretcher on which was Dorothy 
Crewe. 

“Til not go with you to the hospital,” I told 
the surgeon. “I’ll go to her people; don’t 
’phone them.” And so, while the police looked 
for Jerry, I went to Dorothy’s people and tried 
to tell them — Keeban. 

Keeban? Of course they did not believe. 
Stunned themselves, they thought me mildly 
maddened by what had happened. Keeban! 
What did I truthfully know of him? I got back 
home at last and stopped at Jerry’s room, which 
had always been next to mine; I opened the 
door and in the dark looked in. “ Keeban! ” I 
said to myself. “By God, there’s a Keeban; 
there has to be! ” 

And, careful not to wake my own people, I 
went into my room. 


Ill 


I HAVE ENCOUNTER BY THE RIVER. 

As long as I stayed by myself, I had some 
luck at believing; but there was morning and 
the newspapers and telephone calls. I had to 
tell my father then, and mother; and they talked 
with the police. They talked with Mrs. Spar¬ 
ling and Gibson and fifty others who were at the 
dance. And also they talked with Dorothy. 

She was conscious now but in complete col¬ 
lapse, and her prostration, added to what she 
said, gave the final proof against Jerry. She’d 
loved him, too, it seemed; and he’d attacked and 
robbed her. 

There’s no sense in stringing here the sensa¬ 
tions the papers spread; they were perfectly 
plain and obvious. “ Foster Son of Millionaire 
Attacks and Robs Society Girl ”; and “ Found¬ 
ling of Fanneals Turns Brute”; and “Waif 
Reared to Riches Reverts to Original Savagery ” 
and all that tosh. They dogged my people and 
me, the servants and even our office force. They 


KEEBAN 


32 

ran articles by “ professors,” cheap alienists, psy¬ 
choanalysts and the rest of the ruck running 
after sensation. 

Jerry had “ reverted”; that was the seed of 
their stuff. He carried in his blood a “ com¬ 
plex ” which suddenly caused him to cast off all 
the restraints and habits of thought and conduct 
which our family had drilled into him and to 
plan and effect the robbery of the jewels about 
Dorothy Crewe’s neck. The dance and drink 
that night had inflamed him, they said; then 
something flared up inside him and he forgot all 
that we had grafted into him, forgot even his 
own obvious advantage in remaining the son of 
Austin Fanneal, for the “ primordial, overpow¬ 
ering instinct for violence.” 

I found nothing to put against all this. I 
talked to the people whom Jerry had told me 
he’d seen at the Drake at the time when Gibson 
and the rest said he was at the Sparlings’. Town¬ 
send and Sally Westman and Downs admitted 
they’d seen Jerry at the Drake but they all be¬ 
lieved they’d become confused in guessing at the 
time. It was earlier that he was over there, they 
thought; then he must have gone back to the 
Sparlings’ and taken Dorothy away. I got no 
help from them. 


ENCOUNTER BY THE RIVER 33 

How could I tell them of Keeban? My 
own mother was sorry for me when I told her. 
She took the strong line she always does; she 
considered herself to blame for having taken in 
Jerry, twenty-eight years ago, and with no 
knowledge of his blood, rearing a child with un¬ 
known capacities for crime and putting him into 
a position to harm others. 

Dorothy’s people that day proclaimed a re¬ 
ward of ten thousand dollars for the taking of 
Jerry Fanneal, dead or alive; and my father, on 
that same day, put up ten more. He sent pic¬ 
tures of Jerry to all the papers and himself sup¬ 
plied the minute descriptions telegraphed to St. 
Louis, Cleveland, Denver, Philadelphia, New 
York, everywhere. 

They set the whole world after Jerry while I 
— I, in those days, went down to business and 
tried to do it, there in my office with my name 
on the door, next to the door which had borne 
Jerry’s name. 

But now his name was gone. They dissolved 
it with acid, so that no one could see that the 
gold leaf on the glass had ever formed his 
initial; and they burned every sheet of paper 
with his name on it. So there by day, beside his 


KEEBAN 


34 

empty office, I tried to do business and, when 
the day was over, I walked by the river. 

The Chicago River, as many may know, cuts 
the city like a great, wide Y with long, narrow, 
irregular arms, one reaching northwest and the 
other southwest from the top of the short, 
straight shank which is the east-and-west chan¬ 
nel from Lake Michigan. Not to the lake, re¬ 
member, for the Chicago River flows in the 
opposite direction from the natural current, 
since men have turned it around to carry water 
from the lake up the shank of the Y and then up 
the southwest branch to the drainage canal and 
to the Illinois and the Mississippi rivers. It is 
a useful, but not the most fervent Chicagoan can 
call it a pleasing stream, even in its valuable 
reaches on the main channel east and west, and 
where the south branch turns past the most pre¬ 
cious property of the city. 

Here and there are modern warehouses with 
a hundred yards or so of decent, new dock be¬ 
tween the bridges which cross the channel every 
block or so, but most of the buildings forming 
the river bank show straight up-and-down walls 
of narrow, tall, none-too-clean windows and 
cheap brick, badly painted. At the bottom of 
the wall, there may be only a pile strip to sup- 


ENCOUNTER BY THE RIVER 35 

port the structure, but more frequently the but¬ 
tress before the slow flow of the water is a couple 
of yards wide, offering a loading platform for 
ships which may tie up alongside or for the flat 
steam scows of the Merchants Lighterage Com¬ 
pany which ply up and down the river. 

Our building backs on the river, not far from 
its bend to the south and frequently, at the end 
of the day’s work, Jerry and I would go out by 
the river way and along on the strip of platform 
beside the water. Instantly it took us from the 
world of streets and dust and carts and trucks 
and taxicabs, from the traffic pound and clatter; 
there a five-thousand-ton steamer, deep-laden, 
slips up beside one so silently that you hardly 
hear the plash of the bow wave washing before 
it and the lap of the eddies on the timber under 
your feet; you hear the sudden, clear voices of 
seamen; bells sounding from engine-room 
depths; now the whole air rumbles with a tre¬ 
mendous, unlandlike blast as the vessel blows 
for the opening of the bridge, under which scur¬ 
ries a black tug, lake bound, dipping her banded 
funnel for clearance. Watermen scull an open 
boat across the oily current on river business of 
their own. Before you and above reach the 


KEEBAN 


36 

bridges bearing the streets; but they seem now 
concerned with affairs of another world. 

No one else ever took that walk with Jerry 
and me; we had idled along the river hours on 
end together, following the black band of the 
narrow timber causeway above the water to 
which, here and there, elusive, unidentified 
doors would open. Somewhere along there, if 
anywhere, Jerry was likely to look for me, I 
thought, if he wanted me alone and unwitnessed. 
So, after Jerry was gone, I kept up by myself the 
habit we had formed together; and on the sev¬ 
enth night I came this way — it was Monday 
evening and the ninth day after Jerry disap¬ 
peared — one of those doors to the water sud¬ 
denly opened beside me. 

The hour, which was half-past five, was more 
afternoon than evening, but the darkness was 
almost of night; for the month had turned to 
November, and between the brick walls of the 
canyon where the black river flowed there was 
less light from the sky than from the few win¬ 
dows where yellow bulbs glowed. It was so cool 
as to feel frosty as I walked against the fresh 
breeze blowing in from the lake. 

“ Steve! ” said a girl’s voice, hailing me. 

I turned, and, in the light which came through 


ENCOUNTER BY THE RIVER 37 

the doorway, I found a trim young person gaz¬ 
ing at me. As the illumination which came 
from a single, unshaded electric bulb set on a 
blank wall opposite the door was behind her, I 
could see at first only that she wore a dark, tail¬ 
ored suit and a small, dark hat over hair which 
was unbobbed, abundant and light in color — 
almost as light as Dorothy Crewe’s had been. 

“ Steve, do you want to talk with Jerry? ” she 
asked me calmly. “ Come in, then.” 

She stepped back, and I stepped after her. As 
soon as I was in, she closed the door; and there 
was Jerry standing in the corner back of the 
door. 

“ Hello, Steve,” he greeted me without emo¬ 
tion. 

“ Hello, Jerry,” I said, and tried to show as 
little, but I was feeling more than ever before in 
my life. For here we were, Jerry and I, who’d 
spent all our lives together; here we were alone 
with that girl, who’d evidently come with him. 
I looked at her again and made sure I didn’t 
know her. 

“This is Christina, Steve,” Jerry told me in 
that same, dull voice, purposely deadened to 
keep out emotion. “ Christina,” he said to her, 
“ this is Steve.” 


KEEBAN 


38 

“ Who’s Christina, Jerry?” I said; stupid 
thing to ask. He knew it was stupid and he 
smiled, as Jerry always did; he was used to my 
being stupid. He simply nodded toward her to 
say, “ You see; there she is.” 

I stared from her and looked about the room, 
which was a square, bare place with white¬ 
washed walls, corresponding to an ordinary 
cellar room. 

Considered from the street side of the build¬ 
ing, a hundred feet or so away, it was a cellar, 
though its riverside door was eight or ten feet 
above the water. A single window, with a 
drawn blind, was beside that door; in the oppo¬ 
site wall, beside the light, was another door, 
leading either to a basement cavern which could 
have no outside light, or to a stair; I could not 
know, for the door was closed and bolted. 

The floor was cracked cement, strewn with 
straw and wisps of excelsior; old, open boxes 
and barrels stood about and a broken desk and 
chairs. Evidently the place had once been used 
as a shipping room but had been deserted. I 
tried to locate it in connection with some par¬ 
ticular building, but failed, for I had not kept 
track how far I’d walked. 

Suddenly Jerry told me, as though he’d seen 


ENCOUNTER BY THE RIVER 39 

my thought, “ We’re back of Linthrop’s old 
warehouse, Steve.” 

Then I knew that the building above us was 
empty; and I knew, as I gazed at Jerry, that 
he’d chosen this place to stop me because of his 
uncertainty of me. 

And here I stood before Jerry shaking with 
my uncertainty of him! He saw it. An impulse 
swept over me to seize him and drag him 
through that door to an arrest; for the instant, I 
stood before Jerry, not as his brother who be¬ 
lieved in him — I who had given my word to 
believe in him — but as a representative of soci¬ 
ety which hunted him for his treacherous, savage 
attack upon Dorothy Crewe. For the instant, I 
saw him as others thought, — my brother with 
a beast inside him which had struck, through 
him, at Dorothy Crewe. 

Then the sight of his face heaped upon me too 
many other memories of Jerry and me through 
twenty-eight years. He was not quite as he had 
been; how could he be? He was hunted for 
crime; for nine days he had known that all his 
world — all the world which we had made his 
— believed he had committed that attack on 
Dorothy Crewe. And she had believed! 

So it showed in his eyes; it lined his lip stiffer 


KEEBAN 


40 

and more defiantly; it cast something harder 
into his whole countenance. Of course his 
clothes made him different, too, for he had on a 
heavy, badly cut suit of cheap wool such as 
roustabouts and deckhands wear; he had a 
Mackinaw coat and cap on the chair behind 
him. 

“ I’ve got to get out, Steve,” he said to me. 
“ That’s why I stopped you.” 

“ You’ve been here all the time? ” 

He nodded. “ In Chicago,” he said. 

The girl had been keeping away from us, but 
she stepped up beside him; and I saw again the 
corn color of her hair, which was like Dorothy 
Crewe’s. She had blue eyes, too; otherwise, she 
was not like Dorothy. She was pert and bold, 
this girl — a sort to get what she went after. 
What was she to Jerry? I wondered. Where 
had he found her? What was her business here 
to-night with him? 

“ He’s got to have coin, Steve, don’t you see? ” 
she said to me. 

“ Why? ” 

“Why?” She laughed at me. “Ain’t no¬ 
body after him? Oh, perhaps you ain’t heard? 
You don’t read the papers; maybe you don’t 
read. Can’t Steve read, Jerry? ” 


ENCOUNTER BY THE RIVER 41 

Jerry made no reply but to shake his head a 
little at her; then he watched me. 

“ D’you suppose,” Christina continued to me, 
“ it’s worth nothing to nobody — whoever sees 
him or gives him a hand or a cot or a meal — to 
do a squeal? Is everybody in this city so ele¬ 
gantly fixed that nobody could possibly find any 
use for twenty thousand smackers? ” 

“ Keep still, Christina,” Jerry said. 

“ How much do you need? ” I asked him. 

“ How much can you drag with you?” the 
girl kept at me. “ When you got to buy yourself 
past bulls and beefers, who can drag down 
twenty thou by simply settin’ the squeal, how far 
do you suppose a dime’ll go toward squarin’ 
’em? ” 

“ Cut it, Christina,” Jerry said this time. 
“ Steve doesn’t know how to be mean.” 

“ Don’t this time,” she shot at me. “ Have it 
with you along here at ten to-morrow night. If 
the old man can stick up ten thou to get him, 
can’t you find something like it to help him 
away? ” And she switched out the light. 

I replied but stood in the dark and heard the 
door to the warehouse unbolted; I heard their 
steps within, echoing away. Outside, on the 
platform beside the river, somebody approached 


KEEBAN 


42 

but did not stop. The warehouse went quiet and 
there was nobody by the river, so I stepped out. 

Here I was, where I had gone in, and I tried 
to think how I’d changed from ten minutes 
before. I’d talked to Jerry; or hadn’t I? 

It was strange that never once, when he was 
before me and I was speaking to him, I doubted 
he was Jerry; yet I’d sworn to him, on that 
night they arrested him, that I’d believe Keeban 
existed also; I’d believe Keeban robbed Doro¬ 
thy Crewe and threw her into the street. Conse¬ 
quently, I ought to believe that the man with 
Christina might be Keeban. But I didn’t; I 
didn’t believe in Keeban at all just now; and 
yet a few minutes ago, I did. 

I went home and said nothing to my people; 
I said nothing about this to any one at all. I 
stayed by myself that evening and, about eleven 
o’clock, I walked down by the edge of the lake 
beyond that strip of park which turns in front 
of the homes on the Drive and near which we 
live. 

“Steve!” a voice whispered to me; and I 
jumped about. 

Jerry had come up beside me at the edge of 
the lake. This time he was alone. 

He was not in deckhand’s garb and Mackinaw 


ENCOUNTER BY THE RIVER 43 

coat; he wore a plain, dark jacket and felt hat. 
I could not plainly see his face; the light from 
the lamps on the Drive gave me only glints on 
his cheekbone and nose and chin and in his eyes 
turned to mine, but enough to make me know 
Jerry. 

Then I remembered I’d known the man in the 
warehouse basement for Jerry when he was 
speaking to me. 

“ Hello,” I said. 

“ Steve, he called on you to-day 1 ” 

“Who?” 

“ Keeban! ” 

I stopped and thought a minute; and I was 
shaking. “ Oh,” I asked him, “ where was 
that? ” 

“You know,” he came back. “ I don’t; but 
didn’t he see you? ” 

“Yes,” I said; and went right on. “What 
was over our old beds when we slept together 
in the north room? ” 

“ You didn’t ask him that? ” this fellow said. 

“ No; but I’m asking you.” 

“ Oh, a picture of the Constitution fighting 
the Guerriere, Steve, you old fool! ” 

“ Anything peculiar about it? ” 

“ I’d cracked the glass across the lower right 


KEEBAN 


44 

corner, shooting my air rifle in the room, dis¬ 
obeying mother. She never would have it 
mended.’’ 

“ What was opposite?” 

“The charge up San Juan hill. Anything 
else? ” 

“No; that’s enough. You’re — Jerry. How 
do you know about that other meeting? ” 

“I don’t; that’s why I’m asking you. But 
I’ve been waiting for it and I got the hunch he’d 
reached you to-day.” 

“ Keeban?” 

“He goes by the name of Vine just now; 
Harry Vine. There was somebody with him? ” 

“ A girl,” I admitted. 

“ Light haired?” 

“ As light,” I said slowly and deliberately, 
“ as Dorothy Crewe’s.” 

He had to draw breath deep after that. 
“ Steve, how is Dot? ” 

“ Don’t you see the papers? ” 

“ Of course.” 

“ Well, they’ve told the truth about her con¬ 
dition.” 

Again he drew deep breath; then he struck 
his hands together. “ I’ll cure her, Steve, by 
the only way. I’ll show her Keeban! But 


ENCOUNTER BY THE RIVER 45 

we’ve got to be careful — awfully, awfully care¬ 
ful, don’t you see? I’ve got to catch him, not 
scare him away. Suppose he goes off forever; 
suppose he’s drowned, body lost; suppose he’s 
burnt; suppose a dozen wrong things, Steve, 
and I can never show him. Then I’ve got to be 
Keeban forever; nobody but you will ever be¬ 
lieve! Will they? ” 

“ Nobody,” I agreed. 

“Come, then; to-morrow’s our chance. No 
word to the ‘ bulls ’ or he’ll hear it and not show 
up. We have to handle this ourselves and close. 
Who was with him? Christina? ” 

“ That’s what he called her.” 

“ She talked for him? ” 

“ Come to think of it, Jerry, she did, mostly.” 
“ That’s why he had her; my voice gives him 
most trouble. Sometimes he gets it perfectly; 
then he goes off into things I’d never say. He 
knows it but doesn’t know what to say. He’s so 
near perfect for me that he fooled you, you see; 
no wonder he fooled Dot.” 

“ No.” 

“ What did he ask of you? ” 

“ Money.” 

“ How much?” 


KEEBAN 


46 

“ He left that to me but suggested — Chris¬ 
tina did — ten thousand dollars.” 

“ Um,” said Jerry and set to thinking. 

I did some myself. “ What did he want with 
ten thousand dollars if he has Dorothy’s dia¬ 
monds?” I demanded. 

Jerry gazed at me and smiled; I could see the 
glisten of his teeth. “ Don’t you and the pater 
keep going down to business, Steve? Pater 
could buy ten strings like Dot’s, if he’d a mind 
to, of course; but I never saw him refuse a 
chance to pick up a few thousand more. 
What’re you going to do, Steve? ” 

“ That’s what I was down here for, thinking 
it out.” 

“ Get the money, Steve. Draw it yourself 
from the bank. He’ll have you watched so he’ll 
know whether you have. Then have it; and tell 
nobody else but go to meet him.” 

“ Alone?” 

“ I’ll be there. Now, don’t you see? ” 

“ Yes,” I said. 

“ Then you’ll do it? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Great! Your hand on it, Steve! ” 

I gave it and he grabbed me. “ Now I’ve got 
to go. Hamlet’s father’s ghost has nothing 


ENCOUNTER BY THE RIVER 47 

whatever on me! For a certain term, I can 
walk the night; then, * fare thee well!’ One 
minute; suppose you meet my friend before I 
do, don’t forget; don’t bother him with the bat¬ 
tles of the War of 1812 or San Juan Hill or test 
him on Hamlet. Just try to interest him, till I 
arrive.” 

He stepped from me. “ Don’t follow,” he 
asked, and I let him go; and once more, when 
he was gone, I wondered what I knew. Two of 
them there were, he said; but I had not yet seen 
two. 

Why could not both be Jerry — clever, quick- 
seeing Jerry? Suppose he had known, after he’d 
met me in the room beside the river, that I was 
bound to doubt and waver; and so he’d come 
with this scheme, this clever scheme, to lead me 
on and make me give my word. Anyway, here 
I was with my word given and my hand on it. 


IV 


I SIT IN ON FATE. 

I GOT the money next day; I took it myself 
from the bank. Also I got my revolver and 
spent the evening in the city. About half an 
hour before ten, I went to our offices and roused 
the watchman to let me in. I pretended to work 
for a while and then let myself out the river 
door and started down the black, narrow walk 
above the water. 

No one was anywhere about at that hour; not 
a window in the walls on either side was alight. 
Ships slid in and out; one minute deckhands, 
sailors and mates on watch would glide by with¬ 
in ten feet of me; the next I was alone with 
black, locked doors on one side, the water on the 
other. 

I heard my name whispered in Jerry’s voice. 
“ You’ve got it? ” the voice said; and some one 
was beside me. 

This was Jerry of the Mackinaw coat, of the 
basement room and of the companionship of 


I SIT IN ON FATE 49 

Christina. If he were Keeban, I must hold 
him; I must not question nor show doubt. If 
he were Jerry, I had nothing to do. 

“ Here I am, Jerry,” I said. 

“ Give it to me.” 

I kept him walking beside me until the faint 
light, which trickled down over the bridge at 
the end of the block, showed me his face, Jerry’s 
face; but, for all of that, also Keeban’s. 

“ Satisfied now? ” he asked me, laughing. 
“ Come, Steve! ” And he put his hand on my 
wrist. I drew back, thinking that, if he were 
Keeban, he’d murder me for ten thousand dol¬ 
lars if, for her necklace, he attacked Dorothy 
Crewe. I had my hand on my revolver, yet he 
had the advantage of me, for he could strike 
without warning and I must wait to see what he 
meant to do. 

Down the river, a steamer blew for bridges; 
and, “ Come now! ” he said again to me. 

Then some one else was there; some one else 
of his sort and burly in a Mackinaw coat; and 
my wrist was my own; no one had hold of me. 

They were grappled together and together 
went down. 

“ Stay out of this, Steve! ” Jerry’s voice said 
to me; and some one choked; some one gasped 


KEEBAN 


So 

for breath. I bent over them and in that trickle 
of light from the bridge, I saw a face — one 
face, Jerry’s. I could not see the other. Then 
they turned; the one on top was on the bottom 
but they were over again before I could see. 
There was Jerry’s face once more. 

“ Stay out, Steve! ” 

They were throttling each other as they 
rolled; they came to the edge of the water and 
I pulled them back, hauling on one and drag¬ 
ging the two. 

A light was coming; soon I would see; for 
the boat, which had been blowing for the 
bridges, was slipping up. I looked about to it; 
and something happened; a splash below me. 
One of the two was gone; the other, gasping, 
stood on the edge of the timbers, staring down 
and moving along this way and that while he 
watched. 

I had my gun out now and shoved it against 
him. 

“ Steve, you old fool,” he cried. “ He broke 
my hold; he’s in the water! Watch; where is 
he?” 

“You tell me this,” I came back at him. 
“ What was the book we kept first in the case at 


I SIT IN ON FATE 


5 1 

the edge of your bed? What were you always 
reading? Damn you, tell me quick! ” 

He laughed, sucking for breath. West¬ 
ward Ho,’ Steve, you old fool! ” 

“ And the next one? You hardly knew which 
was better.” 

Kidnapped!’” 

“ Jerry! ” 

“Here’s the boat!” Jerry cried. “Damn 
him, he’ll get away!” For the big hull, with 
her lights, her sprays of steam, her splash of 
screws, was beside us. “ He’s swum under 
water to the other side; he’s come up there. 
He’s got away,” Jerry finished. 

Of course we waited till the ship was past and 
waited and searched long after but found no one 
for our trouble. 

“ Where’s the money? ” Jerry asked me then. 
“ You didn’t give it to him? ” 

“ He’s the one that met me first? ” I said. 

“ Yes; of course. Did you give it to him? ” 

“ No; I didn’t have it. I’m not the complete 
fool, Jerry. I got it from the bank and left it in 
our office.” 

“ Let’s go there.” 

We entered our building by the river door and 
went up the back way to my office. Jerry knew 


KEEBAN 


52 

those stairs; he knew where to turn in the dark; 
he found the light switch by feel and without 
fumbling. There was not the slightest doubt, 
when the light came on, that I was with my 
brother Jerry. My trouble was simply had I 
been with any one else? 

Of course I had seen some one else in a Mack¬ 
inaw coat who had fought with Jerry; but all I 
saw was his size and his coat; I never saw, 
together, two faces which were Jerry’s. I could 
not help thinking this as we sat down; I could 
not help wondering if all that business down 
there beside the river was a set stage play of 
Jerry’s to fool me. 

He opened the drawer where I kept cigarettes 
and took one and lighted it. “ How’re sales? ” 
he asked me. 

“ Oh, fair.” 

“Tell me, did Smetsheen, in Minneapolis, 
pay his account? ” 

“ In full, yesterday. You keep on thinking 
about the office, Jerry? ” 

“ To tell the truth, not once till just now.” 

“ Where have you been keeping yourself? ” 

He smiled. “ Moving mostly.” He walked 
to the door of the room which had been his office 
and looked in. “ Who’s there now? ” 


I SIT IN ON FATE 


53 


“ Nobody.” 

“ Not waiting for me? ” 

“ I am,” I said. 

He shut the door, running his finger over the 
space where they’d dissolved the gold letters of 
his name. “ They’re right,” he commented. 
“ I’ll never be back — to stay; that is unless I’m 
caught before I catch Keeban. He had a good 
idea for me on that money, Steve; I can use it. 
Got it here? ” 

I nodded. 

“ Want to give it to me? ” 

“ There’s a squeal set against you which you’ve 
got to square? ” I asked. 

“ Who told you that? ” 

“ Christina.” 

“ Haven’t you got us mixed now? ” He 
looked at me. 

“ Maybe,” I said, boldly. 

He got up. “ Keep your damn money. By 
God, you, Steve-” 

I got up and pushed him down into his chair. 
“ I don’t deserve that. You know it.” 

He laughed. “ You sure don’t. Old Top, I 
had a hundred on me that night at the station; 
it’s spent. Problem; how to live? Bigger 
problem; how to entertain? I might blow a 


KEEBAN 


54 

peter, work a second story, stick up a store, 
scratch some paper; but nomfelonious en¬ 
deavor, old Bean, is absolutely closed to me. 
I’ll come to some of the big-time stuff; I’ll have 
to, if I keep my place; but I can’t help a certain 
prejudice in favor of postponing it as long as 
possible. Meantime, I’ve simply got to enter¬ 
tain. I’m supposed to have rocks worth a quar¬ 
ter million, you see.” 

“You mean, in the underworld, of course 
you’re Keeban.” 

He laughed. “ Underworld’s good, Steve. 
Marvellous how the human race laps up that 
‘ up ’ and 1 down ’ rot. We simply have to have 
it, heaven and hell, above and below. Who be¬ 
lieves in either as a place? Think it out a sec¬ 
ond, Steve; where, exactly, d’you suppose is the 
underworld? ” 

“Why,” I said. “ South State Street, partly; 
and part of the west side. Down in New York 
along the Bowery, in spots, and near the east end 
docks.” 

Jerry shook his head, still smiling. 

“ Where is it, then? ” I retorted. 

“Where’s hell, Steve, these days?” 

“ Why,” I said, “ within one.” 

“That’s it; there’s where’s the underworld, 


I SIT IN ON FATE 


55 

too. Among those who carry the underworld 
within their breasts, I’m Keeban; and therefore 
needing, more or less immediately,” his tone 
trailed of! practically, “ as much of ten thousand 
dollars as you’ve got in that peter behind you 
and which you feel inclined to give. It’ll go to 
good use, Steve; great use! No sense trying to 
tell you now. Take Christina, for an example. 
You saw her last night.” 

“ Of course.” 

“ Recognize her? ” 

“No,” I said, but I wondered; and at his 
hint, something stirred in my memory. 

“ Think red hair, not yellow.” 

I couldn’t, to any use; yet now I was sure I 
had seen her. More than that, I’d known her, 
and I groped for her name and her right associa¬ 
tion, in my memory. 

“Who is she, Jerry?” 

He shook his head. “ Not now.” 

“ Where’d I meet her before? ” 

He smiled again. “ In the underworld, one 
time you went there.” 

“ You mean that time you and I went down 
South State Street to-” 

“ There you go, thinking up a place again, 
whereas, old Top, the place was most proper; 



KEEBAN 


56 

polite, in fact, and almost in our highest circles. 
The only underworld about was the bit she 
packed with her; but it was quite a bit, believe 
me. And it’s growing.” 

“ That means,” I guessed, “ something’s going 
to happen where she is? ” 

Jerry looked away and thought and looked 
again at me. “ That’s one place something’s 
fairly sure to happen soon; of course, there are 
several others. It’s funny, Steve, to see our¬ 
selves now.” 

“ From where you are, you mean? ” 

“ That’s it. Take me, for instance, as I was? 
Down there, in the east end of New York, was 
my particular friend, Keeban. I knew nothing 
of him; he knew nothing of me, probably, till a 
bunch from Princeton ran onto him and took 
him for somebody they knew. They sure must 
have puzzled him, but they started something in 
his head which he half tried out by ‘ touching ’ 
another Princeton bunch for a hundred and get¬ 
ting it from Davis. About that time — as long 
as eight years ago — Keeban 1 marked up ’ me.” 
“ ‘ Marked up? ’ ” I repeated. 

“ Marked up my name on his board as good 
game for attention when he could get around to 
me. What made him put it off so long, I don’t 


I SIT IN ON FATE 


57 

know; probably he’d a lot of prospects chalked 
on his board ahead of me; probably he felt he’d 
wait until he could put in the time to make 
proper preparation to appear as me. He 
guessed he had a great chance for a big haul; 
and — he made it.” 

Jerry went pale and looked down. “There’s 
many more marked up on Keeban’s board and 
on others’. I know some of the names marked up 
and something about what’s going to occur to 
them. It’s a little like sitting in on fate, Steve,” 
he said, color coming back to his face, “ to see 
this man’s number and that creeping up to the 
top of the board; to a limited extent, one knows 
what’s behind to-morrow, what’s going to hap¬ 
pen. Here’s a man you know and I know and, 
to all appearances, he’s sitting secure; but on 
Harry Vine’s board, we’ll say, his number is up 
toward the top. He doesn’t guess it and you 
can’t nor anybody else in the city; but at a cer¬ 
tain time, and at a certain place and exactly in 
one way, he’s going to die; and that’s all there 
is to it.” 

“ Who’re you talking about, Jerry?” I de¬ 
manded. 

He changed swiftly. “Nobody; just talk. 
What was I up here for, anyway? ” 


58 


KEEBAN 


“ I left the money up here,” I reminded. 
“ We came up to get it.” 

“ Why don’t you, then? ” 

I turned to the safe and spun the combination. 
When I touched the banknotes, I thought to 
compromise with myself, give him some but not 
all. Like Jerry, he guessed it. 

“ All or none, Steve,” he said. 

I gave him all. 

II That’ll be useful.” 

“Wait!” I held him. 

“ Want it back?” 

“No. You’re sitting in on fate, you said,” I 
went at him. “ You know what crimes are going 
to be committed; then why don’t you stop 
them? ” 

He laughed. “ After I’d stopped the first, 
wouldn’t I soon cease to know? Old Top, a 
man in my position has rather to pick and 
choose. He can stop one, perhaps; then let it 
be a good one! Besides, that’s not my business 
now; I’m getting Keeban. Yet, if certain 
names get to the top of the board, I’ll call you — 
perhaps. On your own wire. Now Hamlet’s 
father’s ghost again. G’night, Steve.” He left 
me. 

Sometimes, when I thought it over, I believed 


I SIT IN ON FATE 


59 

Jerry and Keeban, separate people, had met me 
that night; sometimes I was sure that Jerry had 
worked ten thousand dollars out of me. I would 
analyze his talk and realize how he led me 
along, shifting from direct discussion of the 
money to his hints about Christina and the num¬ 
bers coming “ up ” and then, after making me 
interested in this, how he got the money from 
me. 

But one thing was true and undeniable; I did 
know Christina. Many times during the fol¬ 
lowing days I tried to place her, but never did 
until that call reached me about the next “ num¬ 
ber up.” 


V 


THE UNDERWORLD INTRUDES. 

IT came completely out of the blue. Ten 
minutes to twelve, noon, was the time; and no 
doings could have been more dull and drab than 
mine the minute before the buzzer under my 
desk rattled my “ personal ” call. This meant 
my private wire, which did not run through the 
office switchboard and which had no published 
number in the telephone book; so, when my 
buzzer jerked, Miss Severns always left the call 
to me and quietly rose and vanished from my 
room. 

She always acted as though I owned some 
enormous, private intrigue into which her ear 
must not pry, whereas the truth was that line 
never carried any conversation more bizarre 
than my mother’s voice reminding me to meet 
Aunt Charlotte on the Lake Shore Limited; or 
perhaps mother wanted to be sure I had my rub¬ 
bers; or else Jim Townsend might be after me 
for a round of golf at Indian Hill. Conse- 


THE UNDERWORLD INTRUDES 61 

quently I liked the compliment of Miss Sev- 
erns’s silent disappearance; but I bet she knew 
the truth. Anyway, now she got out and so I 
was there alone. 

I had nothing at all on my mind; I had been 
just finishing a letter to Red Wing about those 
five carloads of Minnesota potatoes which we 
had found somewhat nipped by frost and I’d 
begun the phrasing, in my head, of a crisp, busi¬ 
nesslike note to Baraboo, Wisconsin, about a 
shipment of presumably dried lima beans which 
must have been caught in the rain some¬ 
where. From which you may gather that Aus¬ 
tin Fanneal and Company are wholesalers, 
packers, canners and jobbers of food; a sound 
profitable business and socially absolutely all 
right in Chicago, but still it’s not the most en¬ 
thralling pursuit here. I must admit it had its 
dull spots, even for me; but I was up to my 
eyes in it; for, as I’ve mentioned, I was the only 
child; father was over sixty; and I knew that 
some day I must carry on. So there I was cheer¬ 
ily concentrating on the most polite yet effective 
phrase for telling the Baraboo commission 
house that their beans had got wet; and the 
world was to me a wan expanse of farmers drag¬ 
ging bean vines, Wisconsin warehouses, city gro- 


62 KEEBAN 

eery stores and delicatessens and flat buildings 
full of clamorous families shrieking for food. 
Then that buzz; Miss Severns on her feet and 
out of the office; the door shut and, as I spoke, 
I heard Jerry’s voice: 

“ Steve!” 

“ Old fellow, hello! Where are you? ” 

That was a foolish question, I knew before I 
got it out. He disregarded it entirely. 

“ Put your mind on Winton Scofield, Steve. 
Don’t let him ride home in his own car to-night; 
make him take a taxi.” 

“ Why? ” I cut in before taking time to think. 
Of course, Jerry could not tell me. It was per¬ 
fectly plain from his voice that, wherever he 
was, he had only a few seconds in which to speak 
to me; and if anything was plainer, it was that 
his situation precluded explanations. 

“ Make him! ” Jerry repeated quickly. “ And 
don’t let him know he’s being made. Don’t say 
a word of this to any one, whatever happens! ” 
And the wire at the other end went dead; but 
I continued to hold the receiver until central’s 
voice briskly inquired, “ Number, please? ” 

So I hung up and sat staring down on the pile 
of correspondence about potatoes and beans and 
canned cherries; but my world was no waste of 


THE UNDERWORLD INTRUDES 63 

brown bean stalks and pickley delicatessen 
shops; nor was my world the usual dreary array 
of my own social sort, — those who have big 
homes on the Lake Shore Drive and on Astor 
Street and in Winnetka and Lake Forest; who 
have coveys of servants, of course, and put up 
a parade of cars and clubs and country places 
and everything else that looks impressive from 
outside but inside is duller than Deuteronomy. 

They’ve pretty sets of silver and gold things 
about, naturally; and they’ve a good deal of 
platinum, too, with diamonds and rubies and 
sapphires and those green stones — oh, emer¬ 
alds — stuck in. They’ve big bank accounts and 
a lot of other venal environment too tiresome to 
give you a thrill until you hear, all of a sudden, 
it has unduly tempted a gentleman from a 
stratum quite different but yet extremely adja¬ 
cent to your own and the gentleman is likely to 
use some exceedingly direct, not to say personal, 
methods of getting your environment — and 
you. 

For that was what Jerry’s call meant. Win 
Scofield’s name had crept to the top of some¬ 
body’s board in the free society of the gentle¬ 
men— and their lady friends — of the 1 gat 
and the “soup job,” the “Hunk” and the 


KEEBAN 


64 

“ bump off”; in that region, where Jerry had 1 
gone, Winfield Scofield’s number was “up”; 
he had been chalked for a “ croaking.” And as 
I sat there staring and wondering why and how, 
suddenly I ceased to have difficulty in thinking 
red hair, instead of yellow, upon Christina, the 
riverside companion of Keeban. I “ placed ” 
her and knew her name and her association and 
where I had met her; for she was Winton Sco¬ 
field’s wife. Of course she was; that was it! 
What an extension of the underworld into the 
polite world of my own! 

Of course I realized that, as Jerry had said, I 
was thinking like a child; for the underworld’s 
not a compact, separate region; its territory is 
wherever its citizens set foot; and this may be 
at your office door? At the threshold of your 
servant’s hall? On the step of your town car? 
Who knows? For obviously it’s not a place at 
all but a contact, an association, a habit of con¬ 
duct, an attitude toward life and, more than in¬ 
cidentally, toward death. Why should I be sur¬ 
prised that a citizeness had staked out a claim in 
the Scofield mansion? 

I tried not to be. “Old Win Scofield!” I 
thought. He was sitting secure, if any one was, 
you’d say. But somewhere else Jerry was sitting 


THE UNDERWORLD INTRUDES 65 

in on fate; he’d seen Win Scofield’s number 
come up to the top of the rack at Keeban’s club; 
and his ’phoning me meant that an unusual job 
was up. For Jerry had told me he would pick 
and choose and not try to stop a job, unless it 
was a good one. 

“ Say not a word to any one,” he’d told me; I 
took that to mean not to say he’d warned me. It 
couldn’t mean that I wasn’t to get information. 
So I took up my ’phone and called Fred, who 
was my particular friend in the Scofield family. 

Winton, the old man, was his father; of 
course Christina, of the alterable hair, wasn’t 
Fred’s mother; she was his father’s fourth, or 
fifth wife. 

There was rather a lot of unpaid publicity 
about him when he got her; and it turned on 
him, rather than on her, because he’d fallen for 
that rejuvenation operation and, of course, he 
tried to have it secret. 

Naturally the newspapers learned and, as a 
result, Win Scofield fled the town as soon as the 
hospital let him out. As secretly as possible — 
that is, with only a few friends besides newspa- 
papermen and film news service photographers 
present — he’d married Shirley Fendon, a girl 
he’d met at a cabaret. Of course, being sixty- 


KEEBAN 


* 66 

seven or so and she twenty-two, he took her to 
Paris; but recently he’d slunk back to his home 
city. 

Now it had never occurred to me until this 
moment that, in the general excitement over 
Winton’s rejuvenation, nobody asked much 
about Shirley. The spotlight simply wasn’t 
swung her way. 

There she was where several wives — three 
or four, I couldn’t remember — had been before 
her and where, if rejuvenation really meant a 
return to old Win’s youth, several more would 
stand again. 

The sons — they were Kenyon and Fred, 
about my own age and both by the original Mrs. 
Winton Scofield — astutely realized this and 
did a little deal in self-defense. They took over 
the grain business, when the old man was honey¬ 
mooning, retiring father on an income, leaving 
him no vote or interest in the firm which a wife, 
past or present or future, could attach. 

Perhaps this had something to do with his 
floating back to Chicago; perhaps his present 
wife worked that for purposes about to become 
plainer. 

I arranged for Fred to lunch with me and, as 


THE UNDERWORLD INTRUDES 67 

tactfully as possible, I brought up the subject of 
father. 

When you’ve a pater who’s been flattered with 
the spread of news print that had been lavished 
on Winton Scofield, he’s a bit difficult to men¬ 
tion; but I managed to drift in a remark about 
him and I certainly detonated something. Fred 
had been storing too much inside of him con¬ 
cerning father and had required only the gen¬ 
tlest tap on the fuse to cause him to explode. 

“ Isn’t he absolutely ludicrous! ” Fred shot at 
me. “ Age, damn it, Steve, age is no disgrace. 
It ought to be the noblest, most dignified stage 
of a man’s development. What does Shakespeare 
say about age, ‘ His silver hairs will purchase 
good opinion! ’ And Byron-” 

I let him rave on as it seemed to relieve him; 
I knew he wasn’t talking to me so much as he 
was rehearsing father. 

“ — he dyed his silver hairs twenty years 
back; and about the time the tango came in, he 
began pumping his face full of paraffin. Occa¬ 
sionally some of it slipped down in his cheek 
toward his chin. — Now I suppose you’ve heard 
of his rejuvenation operation.” 

I thought for a while and admitted that I had. 
“ Wasn’t it a success? ” I ventured. 


68 


KEEBAN 


“ A howling one — with father. He’s so 
young now he shouldn’t be married, legally, not 
having his parents’ consent. He ought to go 
back and start over at Andover Academy; in 
about four years, he’ll be ready for Yale once 
more. Young? We’re the old men, Ken and 
me, Steve! He’s sure he’s just fifteen; well, he 
surely acts it.” 

After this, I felt I could inquire, without 
seeming too personal, “ How’s he getting along 
with his new wife? ” 

Fred jumped. “ Good God! He hasn’t mar¬ 
ried again since yesterday morning? I saw him 
then and-” 

“ No,” I said. “ I meant Shirley Fendon.” 

“Oh, you call her new?” Fred compre¬ 
hended my peculiar point of view. “ He’s had 
her going on three months now.” 

“ There’s trouble between them? ” I persisted. 

“Of course,” said Fred, “being twenty-two, 
she’s a little old for him, but they do bunny-dip 
beautifully together.” 

“ Who was she? ” I kept after Fred. 

“Who? Shirley? Why, you just said her 
name; Shirley Fendon she was.” 

“Wasn’t that just her cabaret name?” I in¬ 
quired. 


THE UNDERWORLD INTRUDES 69 

“ Well,” said Fred cautiously, “ why go back 
of that? We were willing not to.” 

“ You’ve met any of her friends? ” 

Fred shook his head. “That, at least, has 
been spared us.” 

I steered the talk around so I could ask after 
a while, “ Your father goes down to business 
now? ” 

“ You bet not! We see to that.” 

“ Then what does he do? ” 

“ When he manages to break away from Shir¬ 
ley? Well, in spite of his youth, he keeps up 
with some of his old friends; he likes his rub¬ 
bers of bridge, you know; so every other eve¬ 
ning or so you’ll find the young chap down at the 
club at his old place among the unrejuvenated.” 

“ To-night, for instance? ” 

“ Friday; let’s see,” Fred considered. “Yes; 
he’ll be there to-night; why?” 

Of course I didn’t tell him and I was more 
careful with my next remarks which finally 
drew out the information that, on the nights 
when he played bridge, Shirley, his wife — 
Christina, that was — herself drove down with 
the chauffeur to bring him home. 

That made one thing clear to me, which was 
that the ride which Winton Scofield must not 


KEEBAN 


70 

take in his car to-night was the ride he would 
take with his wife. I wanted to tell it all to 
Fred; but Jerry had warned me not to. 

I was feeling quite comfortable over Jerry 
that day; I figured he must be all right or he’d 
never have ’phoned me that warning. When I 
returned to my office, I merely went through the 
motions of business while I was waiting, really, 
for Jerry to call me again; but he did not. So I 
set to working up a simple, obvious sort of 
scheme that any one, in my place, might resort 
to. Likely enough, I thought, Jerry would be 
satisfied with such a scheme; he would expect 
about that much of me. 

I’d found out from Fred that his father’s 
bridge game broke up after eleven; so at ten 
that night, to make my plan sure, I took my 
roadster up through Lincoln Park and then up 
Sheridan Road to the big, new home of Win 
Scofield. 

He’s had a new one for each new wife, each 
farther north by a mile or so than the one just 
before; and as I went by them (the houses not 
the wives, unless they happened to be in them) 
I checked up my count; four before Shirley 
Fendon’s. 

She’d worked old Win for a wide, low, long 


THE UNDERWORLD INTRUDES 71 

shack of stone with plenty of plate glass and col¬ 
ored decoration; stunning probably was the 
word for it. The expense was patent. I didn’t 
know then that title to land and building was in 
Fred and Ken; they were simply letting Win 
live in the house on an allowance which cer¬ 
tainly must have been liberal. 

The house had one front on the lake and 
another on the boulevard; and at one end was 
a two-car garage. I parked my car below the 
house, went by on foot and, looking into the 
garage, saw both cars within. 

It was easy to see, under the half-raised shades 
and between the curtains of the house, that the 
mistress of the mansion was at home. 


VI 


AND I FAIL TO PREVENT A BUMP-OFF. 

SHIRLEY was at her piano near a window fac¬ 
ing the boulevard walk. As the night was cool 
and therefore the window was down, I could not 
hear what she played but her fingers moved over 
the keys and her red lips parted and closed and 
her red head tossed with animation as she sang 
her song. 

She sang to no one; at least, no one but she 
was visible from the walk. Surely it was a 
light, happy song which she sang as she tossed 
her head and smiled. Her hair was bobbed and 
it flung like fine spun bronze about her pretty 
ears. I thought that if I could paint, I’d take a 
try at her just now with the soft pink light of her 
piano lamp upon her. I’d paint her as Youth — 
Youth and something else. Youth Enchained! 

No; that wouldn’t do. There should be 
something submissive, or at least something 
pathetic about a young person enchained; and 
there was nothing submissive about Shirley 


FAIL TO PREVENT A BUMP-OFF 73 

Fendon Scofield; and not the slightest touch of 
pathos. Not at this moment, at least. Quite the 
contrary. 

I am not a fanciful or figurative man; I can 
watch symbolic dancing from Pavlova and 
Ukrainsky up and down and, unless I hold my 
programme in a good light, the performance 
never brings to me any pervading sense 
of “ Dawn ” or “Death,” of “ The Swan ” or 
“Wild Pansies.” But that dance of Shirley 
Scofield’s gave me a thrill. 

It was a dance, almost, as she tossed and flung 
herself to the lilt of the song I could not hear. 
Perhaps you say I took my thrill from the pro¬ 
gramme which Jerry had furnished to me. Let 
it go at that; anyway, I got it. Youth was set on 
snapping her chains to-night; and it was not 
to be nice snapping. Not at all! Youth was 
wild, orgiastic, reckless and bent on being free. 

I thought her over while I stood out there 
after her dance was done and she had disap¬ 
peared. Beyond any doubt, she was Christina. 
For her appearance to me in that room beside 
the river, she’d assumed yellow hair and a dif¬ 
ferent dress and changed several other things; 
yet I was sure of her. I wondered what was her 
place in the plot afoot to-night. 


74 


KEEBAN 


I was looking in on a last act, I knew; the 
first had started long ago when Win Scofield 
met her in some cabaret and she decided to marry 
him. She might have been Keeban’s woman 
then, I thought; and he, hearing her plan, had 
told her to go ahead. Or perhaps he had made 
the plan for her, marking up Win Scofield on 
his board then; and to-night old Win’s number 
had come to the top. 

I went down the street to my car and started 
the engine and kept it going to be ready while 
I watched. Ten minutes past eleven, I saw a 
light in Win Scofield’s garage; a black car came 
out and a girl got into it. I waited until it was 
in the street and then, stepping on my gas, I 
charged up the road and gave that black car 
all I had. 

It went into the curb and smashed a wheel and 
bent the axle too. I wrecked my front, natu¬ 
rally. Shirley Scofield’s driver was out yelling 
at me; he turned and opened the door of his car 
and switched on the light and I saw Christina 
sitting in a corner. Youth snapping her chains 
wasn’t there. A scared girl was, you’d think; 
but she wasn’t scared. Not she! She was merely 
pretending to be frightened, while she sat there 
mighty quiet and trying to size me up. 


FAIL TO PREVENT A BUMP-OFF 75 

She was wondering whether I recognized her 
from that room by the river, I thought; she must 
have been wondering several other things. For 
one, how did I happen to run into her just at 
this moment? For another, how much did I 
know? 

One thing about me, I’m slow but I’m not ex¬ 
pressive. I may be gradual about getting a 
fact from somebody else but not many learn 
much from me. In bridge, when I bid my hand, 
nobody’s sure whether I have the cards or 
whether I’m just trying to force the other fel¬ 
low up. To-night I stepped up to the car as 
though I’d no idea who might be in it. 

“I hope you’re not hurt?” I started; and 
then, “ Why, isn’t it Mrs. Scofield? ” 

She spoke my name; I said the obvious re¬ 
grets and all that. She made the ordinary 
replies. 

“ I was going down after Mr. Scofield,” she 
mentioned and she spoke to the chauffeur who 
had come about beside me. “ Thurston, if you’ll 
get out the other car now.” 

For a moment that stumped me; for if she 
was going to use another car, I had to use an¬ 
other plan and I hadn’t another. My own ma¬ 
chine, as I’ve commented, was in no shape to 


76 KEEBAN 

respond to an encore on the act I’d just finished. 
At this crisis, Thurston saved me. 

“ You’re all shook up, Mrs. Scofield,” he told 
her; and then I was sure, as I’d suspected before, 
that he was in on her game. He knew that I 
hadn’t just accidentally run him down; and he 
had different ideas about the advisability of try¬ 
ing their old plan with the other car. 

He was a thin, Cassius-looking driver of about 
thirty and of the sort that smoke and dope, as 
well as think, too much. He was a smooth- 
shaven chap and would be good looking if 
the bones of his cheeks were less sharp. 

“ I’m all right, Thurston,” she assured him; 
but I saw she was thinking things over and 
sparring for time. 

“You’d better go back into the house and 
rest, Mrs. Scofield,” Thurston suggested respect¬ 
fully enough but strengthened the suggestion 
with a jerk of his head which he supposed I 
didn’t see. 

Cars were stopping all about us and people 
piling out and asking questions and offering 
help and so on. Shirley took Thurston’s tip 
and let him and me assist her across the street 
into her house. 

She thanked me beautifully and tried at once 


FAIL TO PREVENT A BUMP-OFF 77 

to be rid of me; but I said I’d stay awhile to 
make sure she suffered no bad effect from my 
carelessness. So she gave up in a few minutes 
and telephoned her husband, at his club, that 
she wasn’t coming down to-night and he’d bet¬ 
ter take a taxi home. I waited till I was sure 
he’d started in that - taxi and then I left. 

I’d done fairly well, I thought; I didn’t fool 
myself into feeling that I’d seen old Win out 
of danger absolutely but I did feel sure that I’d 
pried his demise out of the present into the 
future. What’s the phrase that surgeons use? 
I’d considerably prolonged his life, I thought; 
and, so thinking and fairly much pleased with 
my plan after all, I went to bed and to sleep. 

It was half-past four, as I learned after I 
got fully awake, when I was roused by some one 
shaking me. It was father. 

“Wake up, Stephen!” he was saying to me. 
“Wake up! The police are here. They want 
to talk to you. Jerry has just shot and killed 
Winton Scofield.” 

I stumbled up, as you may imagine, with 
father’s words painting the picture in my mind. 
Jerry was in that picture. Then I shook myself 
and cast him out of the image and put Keeban, 
Harry Vine, in his place. 


78 


KEEBAN 


“ When was it, father? ” I asked. 

“ Less than an hour ago. The police roused 
your mother who woke me.” 

He was in pajamas and dressing gown, was 
father, with bedroom slippers on. He was tall 
and gray and gaunt-looking in the glow of my 
reading lamp which he’d lit. He shook a little 
and bent a little more; he believed that Jerry 
did it. 

“ Where was it? ” 

“ Jerry killed him at home.” 

“ How?” 

“ He shot him, I said; he shot him down in 
cold blood.” 

I began at this time to feel it; and what I 
felt was not that Jerry had shot Win Scofield; 
no, not Jerry who’d grown up beside me as my 
brother in this house. That duplicate of Jerry, 
whom I myself had mistaken for Jerry when I 
found him in that basement room, that man and 
his Christina, who then was with him, had 
“got” Win Scofield; and my rage rose against 
her. She was his wife and, if she had not fired 
the shot, she’d been in the plot. I thought how 
I had seen her last night singing and exultant. 
I clenched my hands and shook. 

My father was going on. “ He was seen and 


FAIL TO PREVENT A BUMP-OFF 79 

recognized by three persons. There’s no doubt 
about it at all.” 

“ Who saw him? ” I said. 

“ Mrs. Scofield.” 

I laughed at that and it must have seemed mad 
to father. “ Who else? ” I asked him. 

“ The chauffeur.” 

I laughed again. 

“ And the butler,” father finished. 

I didn’t laugh at that. I hadn’t seen the but¬ 
ler but there was no reason for believing he was 
not in the game. 

“ They got him,” I thought to myself. “ They 
got old Win Scofield.” 

His life was not an invaluable one, as perhaps 
you have gathered; but that wasn’t the point 
with me. They — his wife and other people close 
about him and upon whom he had a right to 
depend — had got him, and certainly in some 
low, treacherous way. No wonder Jerry had 
warned me to try and stop this; he’d told me he’d 
pick and choose, so when he took the risk of 
warning, he’d warn against a more than ordi¬ 
nary crime. 

“ Jerry killed Winton Scofield,” my father re¬ 
peated just then; and I came back at him now, 
“ He didn’t.” 


8 o 


KEEBAN 


I couldn’t tell him that Jerry had sent me to 
try to stop this murder. I remembered in time 
that Jerry forbade me a word. There was no 
use talking to father, anyway. 

“ Get some clothes on,” was all he said to me. 

“ Keeban did that! ” I proclaimed; and father 
pulled up and faced me. 

“There’s no Keeban; don’t let me hear you 
say that again. This family faces the fact; 
Jerry’s gone to crime. We face it and we do 
not shirk our responsibility. Come to yourself, 
Stephen. Jerry’s picture is in police headquar¬ 
ters in every city east or west; New York, Phil¬ 
adelphia, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Balti¬ 
more, every headquarters has reported the same; 
they have no criminal in their galleries who 
would be taken for Jerry. There’s never been 
a Keeban in crime; it’s Jerry.” 

“ Keeban, he goes by the name of Harry 
Vine,” I returned; “he’s not in their galleries 
because he’s kept out of their hands. They’ve 
got to catch a man before they can photograph 
him.” 

My father gave me up. “ Come talk to the 
police,” he said and stalked from my room. 

Downstairs I met Mullaney and a plain 
clothes man from the central detective bureau 


FAIL TO PREVENT A BUMP-OFF 81 

who wanted to know how I happened to run 
into Mrs. Scofield’s car at eleven in the evening. 

I wanted to know something before I an¬ 
swered this; I wanted to know that the witnesses, 
Shirley and Thurston and the butler, were being 
held by the police. 

All three were; so there could be no harm 
in keeping what I knew. You can always tell 
what you’ve kept to yourself but never call back 
what you’ve chattered. I thought, “ When 
Jerry warned me of this murder, he said ‘ not a 
word to any one.’ If I say he warned me against 
Shirley, and the news gets out, not only the po¬ 
lice’ll be after him; the crowd he trains with 
now will go for him and get him, surely.” So 
I said to Mullaney about my collision with 
Shirley’s car, “You have the report on that 
accident.” 

“ So you stick to it that ’twas an accident? ” 

I nodded. 

“ Then tell us, please, what was you doing up 
that way alone at that time so that you had the 
little accident? ” 

I didn’t like his tone; I didn’t like it at all. 

There was no possibility of my convincing 
him of the existence of Keeban; and the im¬ 
possibility of it only made me surer of Keeban, 


82 


KEEBAN 


just as it always did when I argued with father. 
You see at that time, it was a matter of faith 
with mej and nothing feeds up faith like an¬ 
tagonism. I was slow but also stubborn, as per¬ 
haps you’ve perceived. These men were here 
because they were sure Jerry had shot down 
Winton Scofield; Jerry’d been seen doing it. 
I wouldn’t believe that; therefore I had to 
believe in Keeban. 

“ What are you getting at? ” I asked Mul- 
laney. 

He changed his tone. “ Our cards are face 
up on your table, Mr. Fanneal,” he said, re¬ 
spectfully enough. “ We’re not accusin’ you of 
any doin’s; but we think you know more about 
him who was Jerry Fanneal than you are tell¬ 
ing us.” 

“ What do you think I know? ” 

“We figure that you thought he was up 
by Mr. Scofield’s big house last night and that’s 
why you was there; we think you was lookin’ 
for him when you bumped into Mrs. Scofield 
cornin’ out.” 

I could deny that directly and I did. “ That’s 
wrong.” 

“ You didn’t know he was there or you didn’t 
expect him there? ” 


FAIL TO PREVENT A BUMP-OFF 83 

“ No: that’s flat” 

“ Where may he be now? Do you know 
that? ” 

“ I do not.” 

“ That’s flat too, sir? ” 

“ Absolutely.” 

They gave me up after a while; and the re¬ 
porters arrived, bringing details not mentioned 
to me by Mullaney or his companion. The 
reporters had to see all the Fanneal household 
and learn what we thought of Jerry now; they 
wanted fresh pictures, previously unpublished, 
of Jerry and of the rest of us; they had no 
doubt at all that Jerry had committed the 
murder. 

“ Why would he? ” I asked them. 

“ Why? ” was exactly what they wished most 
to know. They asked, “ When Jerry was one of 
your family and before he ‘ reverted,’ had he 
ever quarrelled with or taken a particular dis¬ 
like to Winton Scofield?” 

They were all full of that “ reversion ” idea 
which they played up in their papers. 

I went to my office that morning, not with 
an intention of doing any business but to wait by 
my private wire on which yesterday Jerry had 
called me. Likely enough it was being watched 


KEEBAN 


84 

this morning, I thought; surely I was being 
watched as a natural consequence of the police 
knowledge that I was loyal to Jerry. Every 
few minutes, on the office wire, a newspaper 
or some friend or some crank was calling me; 
once mother called me on the private line; but 
otherwise it was silent. 

By midforenoon the newspapers were strew¬ 
ing all over the streets the news that Jerry Fan- 
neal, who had vanished since his attack upon 
Dorothy Crewe, had reappeared in the role of 
murderer and shot down old Winton Scofield, 
the recently rejuvenated. It gave them full 
flood tide for all their sensation stuff with the 
sun of the new murder and the moon of old 
scandals pulling the same way. Naturally they 
raked over the robbery of Dorothy Crewe and 
the fate of old Win with his former wives. 
You know those pages of pictures which every 
news sheet seems to have these days, — three- 
quarters photographs of the people who stopped 
their car on the railroad crossing, the lady who 
ate the poison and the lady who sent it, the 
new back-stroke swimming champion and the 
tenor who sang at the Auditorium. Well, the 
Fanneals and the Scofields, with Win’s wives, 


FAIL TO PREVENT A BUMP-OFF 85 

pushed them all off the page that day; we had 
it solid. 

When I looked at the picture of Win’s last 
wife, Shirley of the yellow hair, knowing she 
was also Christina, you may imagine I had 
some arguments with myself about staying 
silent. 

A buyer was bothering me all through this 
time. I’d told the doorkeeper and the telephone 
girl, “ Turn off everybody you can.” But weak 
words had taken no effect upon this gentleman 
who, by his own account, was one Klangenberg, 
a keeper of a delicatessen on a fourth-rate 
street off Larrabee. He demanded to see me 
personally about a claim over a shipment of 
Hawaiian pineapple. 

“ He will see you, sir,” my office manager 
reported. “ He says you promised to see him.” 

I shook my head. 

“ He says to say to you, sir, if you don’t re¬ 
member,” my manager continued, “ that when 
you promised, he asked you about Smetsheen 
of Minneapolis.” 

I sat up at that; for Jerry was the one who 
had last asked me about Smetsheen of Minne¬ 
apolis. I went out to see Klangenberg, who 
was a tall, phlegmatic Swede entirely positive 


86 


KEEBAN 


on the subject of pineapple and quite fluent 
about it until he had drawn me off alone with 
him. Then he said, “ 1 Kidnapped ’ and 1 West¬ 
ward Ho ’ says to Steve, 1 They crossed us last 
night; but stick. Not a word; you can help and 
we’ll get them. Stick, Steve.’ ” 

That was all he would say; when I asked 
him anything more, he went back to pineapple; 
he was a buyer again, seeking satisfaction on a 
claim. 

This word, which surely was from Jerry, of 
course helped me to stick. It meant to me that 
he’d tried to prevent the murder and, having 
been “ crossed ” somewhere, had failed; but 
he counted on me to stick while he kept after 
Keeban. 

A few minutes later, Fred Scofield ’phoned 
me and asked me to come up to his father’s 
place. 


VII 


I KEEP MY OWN COUNSEL. 

WHEN I arrived at the big gaudy house, 
where I had watched Shirley singing last eve¬ 
ning, the coroner’s men were filing out; they’d 
completed their examination. Police were all 
about the doors, keeping back a crowd; the 
officers passed me and Fred came down almost 
immediately and took me into the long, gay 
room where Shirley had played and sung. 

The shades were drawn to-day but as they 
were white they let in plenty of light; the 
glass doors to the hall were closed and so, 
though we could talk without being heard, we 
could be seen from the hall and we could see 
most of the lower part of the house and also 
the stairs. 

Fred pointed first to a French window, which 
opened on the lawn upon the lake side; it had 
been forced open and now was braced shut, 
with the catch torn out, the screws hanging. 

“ Here’s where he came in,” Fred told me. 


KEEBAN 


“Who?” I said. 

“ Jerry.” 

“ He was alone? ” 

“ Nobody else was seen. Apparently he 
went first to the sideboard in the dining room.” 
Fred gazed across the hall. “ He made a 
noise there.” 

When Fred stopped, I commented, “The 
papers say he made it intentionally.” 

Fred nodded. “ He wasn’t after silver. That 
was simply a bluff. He brought a bag with 
him and emptied two drawers into it. There 
it is.” 

A canvas sack, like a mail pouch, lay in 
the corner and bulged half full. I didn’t bother 
to examine it. I was trying to figure out Fred’s 
attitude towards me: he wasn’t expressing much 
but keeping hold of himself pretty firm. 

“ Jerry made the rattle with the silver,” Fred 
went on, “ to draw father downstairs. He did 
it. 

“As father appeared on the landing, Jerry 
fired from here — from beside this silk hang¬ 
ing. He fired twice; and neither before the 
shots nor between them nor afterwards did 
Jerry make any attempt to hide, in spite of 
the portiere right there; and the light was on. 


I KEEP MY OWN COUNSEL 89 

He hit father both times; and father’s pistol 
went off in his hand as he was falling; father 
fired wild, undoubtedly, but in Jerry’s general 
direction.” Fred showed the bullet hole near 
the door. “ Jerry wasn’t hit; but he did a com¬ 
plete job with his gun. He hit father first-” 

I stopped Fred. “ I know from the papers,” 
I said. 

“Well, they had that right. Father lived 
about five minutes. He fell on the landing and 
was dead before they carried him up.” 

Fred’s voice cracked; and I put my hand 
on his arm without saying anything. Old Win, 
if he had played the fool towards the end of 
his life, at least had showed good nerve at the 
finish; and when everything else was said, he 
was Fred’s father. When Fred was a boy, 
Winton Scofield had been a good father; no 
one called him a fool then. Every one knows 
the thousand touches of memories of fondness 
from a father; and Fred was thinking of them. 

He went on telling: “Shirley ran down to 
him as soon as he fell; she must have been 
nearly behind him when he got the second 
bullet. She wasn’t hurt but she certainly took 
a big chance to help father. Rowan reached 
him maybe a minute later.” 


90 


KEEBAN 


“ Rowan, the butler?” I said. 

“ That’s right.” 

“ How long has he been in your family? ” 

“ I can’t remember when he hasn’t been.” 

“ He saw the actual shooting, as the papers 
say? ” 

“ Not the firing of the shots. Father was 
down when Rowan arrived at the top of the 
stairs; but Jerry wasn’t gone. Rowan saw him 
plainly. That’s one of the surest things.” 

“ What is?” 

“That Jerry showed himself; he made no 
effort either to hide when father came down 
or to get away immediately afterwards.” 

“ Where was Thurston when he saw Jerry? ” 

“ He’d just come in from the wing through 
that door.” 

“ He shot at Jerry, they say.” 

“Yes; and missed. Jerry fired once at him 
and grazed him. Then Jerry got out.” 

Fred and I looked each other over. I was 
thinking, “Jerry didn’t do that but it is no use 
telling you so.” 

Fred said to me, “You ran into Shirley last 
night.” 

I admitted it. 

He went on,, “ After you’d had me to lunch 


I KEEP MY OWN COUNSEL 91 

to talk over father’s affairs, Steve. I’ve not 
mentioned that to the reporters or even to the 
police yet; but of course I’ve been thinking 
about it.” 

“ Mentioning it? ” I said. 

“ I wanted this talk with you first, Steve. 
Why did you call me yesterday and afterwards 
smash Shirley’s car? What did you know? ” 

I stared at him and shook my head. 

“ Yesterday at lunch,” Fred kept at me, “ you 
asked me particularly about father’s engage¬ 
ments for last night; you asked whether Shir¬ 
ley would drive down to meet him. I told 
you she would.” 

I had nothing to do but to nod at this. 

Fred asked directly, “You smashed into her 
car to stop her? ” 

I stared at him and kept thinking of Jerry’s 
“Not a word to any one” and the message 
Klangenberg brought me from “ Kidnapped ” 
and “ Westward Ho ” which begged me “to 
stick.” Yet I had to say something here or I 
might as well, since my actions already had 
spoken for me. 

“Yes, Fred; I smashed into her to stop her 
from meeting your father.” 

“ I was sure of it. You had reason to think, 


92 KEEBAN 

yesterday, that something was going to happen 
to him? ” 

There was nothing for it but another nod at 
this. 

“ Where did you get your reason? ” 

I might as well have told him; he told me 
that he knew I got it from Jerry. He held the 
police theory with this variation; I had been 
having some sort of communication with Jerry 
through which I had stumbled upon the idea 
that something was going to happen to Winton 
Scofield. I had got the notion that it was 
going to happen through his wife, and so, in my 
stupid way, I’d driven up to the house delib¬ 
erately to smash into her car and scare her out 
of whatever plan she had in her mind. 

Fred was emotionally worked up, of course, 
he believed that I meant well by what I tried 
to do; he didn’t doubt I meant well now. He 
didn’t blame me for having supposed when I 
found something was planned against his father 
that Shirley was in it. 

“ That’s what I thought,” he told me, “ when 
Rowan ’phoned me this morning and got me 
out of bed to tell me, ‘ Mr. Fred, your father’s 
shot.’ 

“The family—Kenyon and I — always fig- 


I KEEP MY OWN COUNSEL 93 

ured, naturally, that money was what Shirley 
was after. That’s why we fixed his affairs so 
she could never get much, even if father had 
wanted to give it to her. He didn’t have it to 
give; we had him on an allowance. The only 
big sum she could get in a lump was his life 
insurance, which he made over to her. He 
carried it from the old days, nearly half a 
million.” 

Here was some of the stuff I’d come for. 
All morning my mind had been reaching for a 
motive, you see, — why old Win Scofield had 
found a place on Keeban’s board and why his 
number had come to the top just now. Fred 
talked on and made it perfectly plain to me. 

While he talked, I put myself in Keeban’s 
place for a while and tried to take things from 
his point of view. I went back a bit to do this — 
back a few months to the time when old Win, 
divorced once more and rejuvenated, had ar¬ 
rived again at the cabarets and resumed beau- 
ing about with the girls. I thought that when 
Shirley — or Christina — had met him, she 
talked him over with Keeban and they’d marked 
him down between them for easy meat. She 
married him to get away with the big money 
old Win was supposed to have but hadn’t; for 


KEEBAN 


94 

Fred and Kenyon had seen to that, as I’ve men¬ 
tioned. Win took her to Paris and brought 
her back to live with him on an allowance. 

Maybe from the first she had had her eyes 
on the old man’s insurance; but I didn’t think 
so. I thought, “ She got into this marriage 
with an idea of an easy get-away with a pile; 
and when Ken and Fred fooled her, she de¬ 
cided to fool them; she saw Keeban again and 
they decided to get that insurance money. But 
they had a big difficulty with that; they had to 
do more than merely 4 croak ’ old Win; they 
had to do it so Shirley would not possibly be 
connected and so the insurance money would be 
paid over to her and she could get away with 
it.” 

There, surely, was a job for them when the 
family and friends thought what they did of 
Shirley. 

Fred was saying to me, “ Ken and I got 
bothered about that insurance. In the first 
place, we didn’t want Shirley to have the 
money, half a million for marrying father; then 
it was costing us over thirty thousand a year 
to pay the premiums; and, also, we figured it 
might be dangerous as a temptation. 

“ Not that we thought Shirley’d kill father 


I KEEP MY OWN COUNSEL 95 

directly, Steve; but there’s many a way to 
shorten a man’s life, indirectly. Father played 
he was young again. Well, all she’d have to 
do would be to over-encourage him with her 
eye on that half million. Anyway, Ken and I 
decided to stop paying the premiums on that 
insurance — save ourselves about thirty thou¬ 
sand a year and make father a little safer.” 

Of course, this told me why old Win’s num¬ 
ber had jumped to the top of the board just 
now; the sons were stopping his insurance. 
Fred continued: 

“ But since the insurance was still in force, 
I couldn’t help thinking of that when Rowan 
called me; I couldn’t help thinking Shirley was 
mixed up in that murder. Then Rowan told 
me it was Jerry Fanneal who’d shot father and 
I knew Shirley couldn’t have anything to do 
with it.” 

Fred talked on; but I didn’t pay much 
attention for a few minutes; for now I could see 
through the rest of Keeban s scheme, I could 
see not only why he had shot Win Scofield, but 
why he had done it himself and why he had 
shown himself in the doing, making no attempt 
to hide. 

For he wanted to be seen; he wanted to be 


KEEBAN 


96 

identified, particularly by Rowan. For Rowan 
would identify him, as Rowan did, for Jerry 
Fanneal; and, so identified, no one would con¬ 
nect Shirley with the murder. Who was Jerry 
Fanneal, in these days? A wild, irresponsible 
criminal, a man from nowhere who had be¬ 
trayed the breeding bestowed upon him and had 
“ reverted.” As he had attacked and robbed 
Dorothy Crewe, now he had entered Win Sco¬ 
field’s house and shot him either wantonly or 
for some old, brooded-over pique; that was 
what the newspapers assumed and the police 
and even Win Scofield’s sons who had most 
hated and doubted Shirley. 

Fred was feeling badly over how he’d ridi¬ 
culed his father the last time he’d talked with 
me and how he’d mistaken Shirley. “ She was 
right there beside father and she never thought 
of herself, Rowan says,” Fred repeated to me. 

“ She held him while he died and-” 

“ How’s she now? ” I asked. 

“ Nearly collapsed. She gave her evidence to 
the police and afterwards to the coroner. She’s 
in bed now.” 

“ Can I see her? ” 

“ You?” said Fred. “Why?” 

“She’s accused Jerry.” 


I KEEP MY OWN COUNSEL 97 

“ So has Rowan; why don’t you talk to him? ” 
“ I will,” I said, “ afterwards. Do you mind 
asking her if she’ll see me? ” 

He went up himself and came down with her 
excuses. But I had expected them and I’d 
written on one of my cards “ Bulls and Beef- 
ers just that and I’d put it in an envelope un¬ 
sealed. I knew Fred wouldn’t look in it when 
he took it up to her. 

“ She’ll see you,” said Fred when he came 
down again. 


VIII 


A LADY DISCREDITS ME. 

She was not in bed but was lying upon it 
in a negligee — a silk and lace, pink and white 
creation which was originally no garment of 
grief. She was pink and white herself, except 
for her bobbed hair of bronze and for her big 
eyes which were blue. She displayed a good 
deal of herself, especially the beauty of her 
bosom; she did this not with any evident de¬ 
sign of the moment but probably upon the gen¬ 
eral principle that it was never a disadvanta¬ 
geous thing for her to do. 

She was alone in the room when I entered 
and Fred Scofield, who came up with me, 
dropped back at the door. She gazed at me, 
making hardly a motion,, and waited for me to 
open the meeting. 

I did it formally, with that door open behind 
me; I said the stupid tosh I felt expected to 
say. 

“ Shut the door and sit down,” said Shirley. 


A LADY DISCREDITS ME 99 

The first part was important, so I did it; then 
I strolled to the foot of her bed and stood. 
She lay looking at me, one hand holding a 
cigarette box which she tapped with her fingers; 
but she wasn’t smoking. 

I was realizing I had never met up with a 
murderess before — at least not with a girl 
who’d done her bit in a bump off for money. 

Of course since I had, in my own right, a 
normal list of acquaintances of fair size, I knew 
a woman or two who’d shot friend husband; but 
the moving impulse was not financial. The 
widow — I mean the woman who immediately 
made herself the widow — in one case happened 
upon husband with another lady on the wrong 
landing; in the other case, she’d become peeved 
about something purely private and so highly 
sensational when sobbed out on the witness 
stand, and followed by an effective faint, that 
the jury not only justified her but acquitted her 
with cheers. 

The widow Scofield, lying here on the bed 
before me, failed to fall in that same class in 
my mind. I doubted if she would in the emo¬ 
tions of any jury; and some doubt of this nature 
seemed to flit across the eyes of blue which kept 
watching me. She was gambling, if not with 


IOO 


KEEBAN 


her life itself, at least with her liberty for life; 
and her stake, if she won, was the neat little 
sum of five hundred thousand dollars to en¬ 
hance her joys of freedom. 

Elsewhere in this house the aged youth, her 
husband, lay dead; and whatever was to hap¬ 
pen, her chapter with him was concluded and 
she could not contrive to conceal from me a 
certain relief at that. Perhaps I imagined it, 
with my picture of her at her piano last night 
still haunting my mind; yet I’m not imagina¬ 
tive. I felt her saying to herself, as she gazed 
at me, “Well, whatever’s to come next, that's 
over. Twenty-two with sixty-seven, rejuve¬ 
nated! ” 

She said aloud to me, “ What did you mean 
by the words on your card? ” 

“ If you don’t know,” I said, “ why did you 
change your mind, after you had the card, and 
send for me? ” 

She didn’t respond; she lay waiting, watch¬ 
fully, and let me look her over and think her 
over with all the deliberation I wanted. She 
seemed to me not so slight as that Christina 
who’d met me at the river ledge with Keeban; 
but I knew enough about the effect of negligee, 
and of a figure loosed from a girdle, to allow 


A LADY DISCREDITS ME ioi 

for more fullness now. Her hair was bronze; 
but yellow over that bronze would have been 
easy enough to manage, especially in the dim 
light of that dock room. Her manner of speech 
had changed; yet I was wholly sure she was 
Christina. 

At the next moment, she admitted it. “ I 
know what you meant, Steve,” she said, speak¬ 
ing my name as she had in that room by the 
river. “ You think you have something on me, 
do you?” 

“ You’re Christina,” I said. 

“Right! Call in my step-son Fred and 
whoever else you care to; Eve something to 
confess which I should have told the police this 
morning — but I didn’t. Yet it didn’t hurt 
anything to hold it back. Call him in! ” 

She sat straight and raised an arm and 
pointed to the door in some cabaret imitation 
of a grand gesture. “ Open the door,” she 
ordered me. 

I opened it and went out and found Fred. 
“ She’s something to say to us,” I told him. I 
decided to include nobody else just then, though 
there were police enough everywhere and all 
keen to listen. Fred and I went into her room 
and closed the door. She motioned us to seats 


102 


KEEBAN 


beside the bed as though she might be Madame 
Recamier on her couch receiving a couple of 
her lesser courtiers. 

“ Fred, I can tell more about the shooting 
last night; I’m going to do it,” she said, look¬ 
ing at Fred, not at me. “ You can decide how 
much to give out to the police — to the ‘ bulls,’ ” 
she added, deliberately blunting her speech and 
gazing at me. She swung back to Fred. 

“ I come from the cabarets, you know; maybe 
you’ve thought sometimes that I come from 
worse. Anyway, you treated me like you did.” 

“ I’m sorry,” said Fred and waited. 

“ That I didn’t come from worse wasn’t any 
fault of Jerry Fanneal. He was hot after me — 
hot after me.” 

Here was the start of a counter-attack on me; 
I felt it and demanded, “ When was that? ” 

“ Oh, before I married; long before the big 
surprise to his swell friends and family when 
he threw Dorothy Crewe into the street. He 
was cornin’ down to the cabarets for a long time. 
Didn’t you know it, Mr. Steve Fanneal?” 

“ Yes; ” I said. “ Often I went with him.” 

“But often not; isn’t that so? Tell the 
truth! ” This was a straight challenge. 

“ Sometimes not,” I granted. 


A LADY DISCREDITS ME 103 

“I guess not! Well, you should’ve seen 
some of those ‘ sometimes.’ The boy was crazy; 
I seen it! ” In her excitement, she was forget¬ 
ting her “ g’s ” and the tenses she could speak 
correctly when she tried to; she was a cabaret 
Recamier now. “ Clean crazy. He kept it 
under when he was back with his swells and 
you; but when he was down with us, he blew 
the lid some distance off, I’m telling you. 
I made him crazier than most, for he couldn’t 
get me. He thought I’d fall for money. Not 
me! 

“ I was glad to get married to a decent man, 
if he was a bit old; and glad to get away, be¬ 
lieve me! Then we made the mistake of cornin’ 
back. I didn’t want to, as you know; but the 
boys wanted father and me to cut down ex¬ 
penses. So we had to come. Anyway, with 
me married and Jerry mixed up with another 
skirt — and a swell one, too — I figured he’d 
forget his old grief about me. But you know 
what he did to his lady friend; well, when he’d 
made himself kll lonely again, he seems to have 
got me back on his busted brain. Anyway, he 
sent word to me to come meet him.” 

“ How did he send word? ” This was from 


me. 


104 KEEBAN 

“ Telephoned.” 

“ Why didn’t you inform the police? ” That 
was another interjection of mine; and she came 
back at me through the wide, wide opening I’d 
left her. “ Why didn’t you, when he slipped 
word to you to meet him? ” 

Fred failed to interrupt; he was too busy 
looking and listening. I reserved my reply and 
she went on: 

“ He mentioned to me tfyat, if I set a squeal, 
I’d hear from it; also that I’d better meet him. 
He wanted money to get away. Of course he 
couldn’t sell those Crewe diamonds at any sort 
of price now; there was too much danger in 
handling them, with everybody watching for 
’em; and too much loss if he had ’em cut. He 
wanted cash money and he thought I could 
bring it. Remember, a couple a weeks ago,” 
she said to Fred, “ I tried to get some consid¬ 
erable cash from you?” 

Fred admitted that. 

She said, “ That was to give to Jerry Fanneal. 
I got afraid of him. I wanted him to get out. 
When I couldn’t raise the cash, I said I’d help 
him get it from his own family; and so I put 
up the talk for him to Steve Fanneal.” 

“ What? ” said Fred. 


A LADY DISCREDITS ME 105 

She had to tell him again and when she was 
through she referred Fred to me. “ Let him 
tell it now.” 

She had me in the hole; and she knew it; 
and Fred saw it. I had no chance at all of 
convincing Fred that the man I met with her 
was not Jerry but Keeban. Here was she de¬ 
nying, like everyone else, that Keeban could 
exist; here was she explaining how Jerry had 
come to do this murder. I knew better than 
to try to tell my story. 

Shirley carried on. “Jerry and I met him 
and he got the money. Ten thousand in cash, 
wasn’t it? ” she examined me. “ If he denies it, 
Fred, ask the teller in his bank — last week 
Thursday he got it. ” 

“ Did you? ” asked Fred. 

“ I did,” I said. 

He nodded to Shirley. “ Go on.” 

“He gave it to Jerry to go away.” 

“That’s right? ” Fred asked me. 

“ That’s right,” I had to admit. 

Shirley continued, “Then Jerry wanted me. 
He’s crazy, you see. Sometimes he’s all right, 
like anybody else; then he’s like when he took 
that necklace from Dorothy Crewe and tossed 
her into the street. He said he’d get my hus- 


io6 


KEEBAN 


band and then me. Isn’t that true? Didn’t 
you know Win was in danger?” Again she 
was at me. 

“Yes; but-” 

“But you tried to stop it, of course; with 
wonderful success! Well, I’ve nothing on you 
there, I tried to stop it too! ” 

Then she broke into crying; and a great chance 
I had. There she was, a girl all white and pink 
in her negligee; and tears, real tears! I got out 
and was lucky to be able to get. 


IX 


I SEEK THE UNDERWORLD. 

For sketching a situation, no one ever touched 
Shakespeare; and he has a line which certainly 
described my state of dignity during the next 
days. It’s in “Julius Caesar”; Anthony has 
just been saying, in some well chosen words 
which escape me for the moment, how impor¬ 
tant and prominent a citizen Caesar was before 
his last meeting with Brutus, whereas after¬ 
wards there was “ none so poor to do him 
reverence.” 

That’s the description which struck me. Lord 
knows, I was no Caesar, not even in Chicago; so 
my fall was not so far, yet the reception at 
bottom was much the same. 

Of course, if you call the incorrigible habits 
of house servants “ reverence ” I still had some 
from them; at least, they kept calling me “ sir ” 
and “ Mr. Stephen ” and somebody sneaked in 
when nobody else was looking, and turned 
down my bed, and Warner drew my bath and 


io8 


KEEBAN 


saw to my shirts. Down at the office, Miss 
Severns continued to take my letters in a re¬ 
signed sort of way; but, in general, I was the 
joke of everybody that knew I still believed in 
Jerry. 

For a while the police watched me, on the 
theory that Jerry, after having worked me for 
ten thousand following his attack on Dorothy 
Crewe, would probably come back and get me 
to give him twenty now; but he didn’t. So the 
“ bulls ” left me alone to go wandering off, as 
soon as I dared, into the northwest morass of 
Chicago in search of Klangenberg. 

I had that territory as part of my sales dis¬ 
trict in the days after I had finished college, 
when father was starting me out in the bean 
business. 

Previously I had gathered, in a theoretical 
way, that people who went to Princeton or else¬ 
where to college in the east, and their parents, 
sisters and other relatives could not provide the 
number of appetites, locally and in the sur¬ 
rounding States, to account for everything we 
sold. Not at all; it was perfectly plain that 
we must sell to any number of people of sorts 
one would never meet in the general round of 
sleeping and breakfasting on Astor Street, driv- 


I SEEK THE UNDERWORLD 109 

ing to the office, lunching at the club, and dining 
on the Drive and dancing at the Casino. In 
fact, father took occasion to impress upon me 
that the caviar and truffle trade of Fanneal and 
Company would barely pay club dues; what 
bought motors and butlers and opera boxes was 
the business in beans — plain baked beans, with 
or without tomato sauce. And the habit of 
dinner dances, jaunts to England and the Con¬ 
tinent had become family pleasures to the Fan- 
neals solely because a large proportion of the 
populace living on streets which only by error 
would ever be listed in mother’s address book 
had taken to the taste of our soups and spa¬ 
ghetti in preference to the purees and macaroni 
put out under other brands. 

Naturally this started me out upon my first 
unconducted tour of the tenement highways in 
a chastened and interested frame of mind. 

My generation began growing up just in the 
ebb of the worst lot of social bunk which ever 
spread over this nation. The last wave of the 
muck which taught that, if anybody had a mil¬ 
lion, he took it from the poor by some scheme 
of social pickpocketing was just subsiding. 
Some of it splashed over my youthful boots; I 
remember, particularly, a cheerful cartoon 


IIO 


KEEBAN 


which the Bolshevists still brandish probably, 
and which pictured a lot of us dancing on a 
ballroom floor which was supported on the bent 
backs of bowed-over men, women and children. 
To give it a dramatic touch, the muscular fist 
of a revolutionist below had broken through the 
floor and thrust up into the ballroom to the con¬ 
sternation of the degenerate dancers, meant to 
be us. 

One thing is to be said for the experiments in 
Russia recently; they’ve made that sort of tosh 
ridiculous; they’ve at least suggested, to the 
brain open to any sort of observation, that the 
direction and the judgment and the initiative 
exercised by a man who organizes and builds 
up a business and keeps it going are in them¬ 
selves productive factors just as necessary as 
labor itself and entitled, fairly, to big reward. 

Father always taught me that this was where 
we got ours; we earned it. So when I explored 
Halsted Street, I did not suffer from any parlor- 
socialist conviction of personal guilt for hous¬ 
ing conditions and juvenile delinquency simply 
because I was selling these people soup at a 
profit, net to us, of seven eighths of a cent a can. 
Naturally I took things as they were, thought 
about them as little as possible, gave a little 


I SEEK THE UNDERWORLD iii 


more to the United Charities and the Salvation 
Army, and kept as far away as I could after 
my city salesman period was past. 

Here I was going back again and with a de¬ 
cidedly new interest in these streets of narrow, 
dingy, clapboard, three-story dwellings, of drab 
and dun brick fronts, serving for a shop on the 
ground level and a dozen tenements above; of 
“ lofts ” and ancient cottages — ancient for Chi¬ 
cago— moved back, end to end, behind the 
buildings now holding the edge of the sidewalk. 

I came to a place where the street, following 
this generation’s level of the city, stands above 
the ground of original days; the walks and road¬ 
way are graded up, leaving the disconsolate, 
paint-specked homes of the first customers of 
Fanneal and Company down on the dirt where 
were thrown fifty years ago, as now, our empty 
cans and papers. The land is so low that the 
street rises almost even with the second floors; 
one has to descend rickety steps to reach the 
doors of gray, ill-lit emporiums of every sort 
which witness, by their very being, to the amaz¬ 
ing force of the proclivity to patronize a neigh¬ 
bor. Half a league from Marshall Field’s, 
preposterous, mediaeval peddlers whined under 
windows shut to the chill smokiness of Decern- 


112 


KEEBAN 


ber city haze; women raised the sash and, after 
bargaining, bought. Half a block from a motor 
factory, a blacksmith hand-pumped his bellows 
to blow coals into heat for shoeing a huck¬ 
ster’s horse; fortune tellers beckoned and won 
business. 

I came upon Klangenberg’s and descended 
into an environment of delicatessen where a ma¬ 
donna of the gray shawl — did Raphael or 
Leonardo ever paint one; if they didn’t, it was 
because they didn’t see one — was watching a 
patented pointer waver before the divisions of a 
cent on the automatic calculator above the scale 
which weighed her purchase of pig’s feet. 
A boy picked them up with unclean hands, 
wrapped them untidily and made change, al¬ 
most in one motion, on a register which printed 
a receipt and said with flashing light, “ come 
again; thank you.” 

The place was heated by a stove before which 
sat a male model for Rembrandt, if he wanted 
to paint the “ Dyke-keeper ” or somebody else 
strong and dour looking who might wind him¬ 
self in a muffler. 

This was not Klangenberg; at least it was 
not the complainer about pineapples who had 
spoken to me of “ Kidnapped ” and “ Westward 


I SEEK THE UNDERWORLD 113 

Ho.” Accordingly, after the Madonna had 
climbed to the street, I asked the boy for the 
proprietor. 

The “ dyke-keeper ” turned about, as though 
his interest in me began with my voice. 

“ Who wants to see him? ” said the boy. 

For the emergency — if you don’t feel there * 
was one, it’s my failure to give you the dyke- 
keeper — I improvised and benefited by bor¬ 
rowing from Klangenburg himself. 

“ I’ve come to see him about his complaint 
on those pineapples,” I said. 

“What pineapples?” the youth asked. 

“ I want to see him personally,” I replied. 

“ Is he here? ” 

“ Maybe,” said the boy and locked the cash 
register before vanishing rearward. Once he 
reappeared, evidently to view me for the pur¬ 
pose of checking up on my description; he said 
nothing but after another minute he came back 
and told me, “ He’ll see you day after to¬ 
morrow.” 

“What time?” I said. 

“ This time will do.” 

I thanked him, while he unlocked the cash 
register for the resumption of business. 


KEEBAN 


114 

One matter was off my mind when I went 
away; this was my qualm as to whether I ought 
to inform the police of Jerry’s connection with 
Klangenberg. They would pick up mighty 
small change at that address, I thought; and 
when I returned two days later, I was sure of 
it. 

Though I entered the door at the precise time 
of my appointment, neither the boy nor the 
dyke-keeper was there; a little girl of ten years 
tended the cash register and piled the computing 
scales with noodles. This child gave me no 
particular attention until she had cleared the 
shop of customers, when she said, “ That’s the 
door back there.” 

I went through it to an area between the 
shop and an old moved-over frame building. 
Some one — I didn’t know who — relieved the 
child in the shop, for she came out to me and 
led me through a shed where a horse was sta¬ 
bled. We sidled about another shed and 
climbed a tunnel of wooden stairs, built on the 
outside of a clapboard house, and roofed and 
walled against the weather. 

“ That’s the door,” the child said, when we 
came to the top; obviously she was speaking, 


I SEEK THE UNDERWORLD 115 

as well as guiding, by instructions. She halted 
and I went on and knocked at the door. 

“ Come in,” said Jerry’s voice; and I opened 
and found Jerry before me. 


X 


AND LEARN THE WAYS OF ITS LOGIC. 

He had just risen from a bed upon which he 
had been seated, — a plain, white, iron bed with 
a red quilt. He looked me over and, welcoming 
me, waved me to a chair, a plain, wooden chair, 
not new. 

The room was ordinary with striped, cheap 
paper on the walls; it had a floor of soft wood 
with a circle of rag carpet; besides the bed and 
chair, there was a washtand boasting of a bowl 
and pitcher. Altogether these were the furnish¬ 
ings which a person reared on Astor Street 
knows to exist but which he has seen only when 
he has happened to pass an express wagon 
heaped with the effects of a Halsted Street mov¬ 
ing or when, detouring by some strange road, 
he comes upon the fruit of an “ eviction.” 

By some amazing transmutation, the man be¬ 
fore me fitted the furnishings as he fitted the 
too “ tailored ” suit, too narrow in lapels, too 
belted at the waist, too conspicuously “ patch 


THE WAYS OF ITS LOGIC 117 

pocketed.” He wore a shirt of too obvious silk 
and overdecorated shoes; and he wore them as 
if he had been bred to aspire to them and to 
nothing else. 

A look at him and I knew why the police, in 
all the time they had searched since the robbery 
of Dorothy Crewe, had never picked him up. 
They had been searching for an Astor Street 
resident in some such garments as Jerry had 
worn by the river; they had expected him, when 
casting off his accustomed clothes, to don rough, 
contrasting attire; no one would have expected 
him to outdo, in his garb, himself as he had ap¬ 
peared before. I, least of all. 

Now I understood that this must be his cos¬ 
tume when in daytime he had to risk the streets; 
and I believed that a dozen detectives might 
meet him, give another glance at his face, but 
after looking him over, they would laugh at 
themselves for suspecting him. “ Here’s a 
Halsted Street flash,” they would say, “ trying 
to make himself look like an Astor Street swell. 
Jerry Fanneal, of Astor Street, would never 
do that.” An officer, bringing in such a man, 
would make himself the smile of his station. 

You would think that I would have said to 
myself, “ This is Keeban.” But the fact was 


ii8 


KEEBAN 


I didn’t suspect him; I was sure at once that he 
was Jerry. Noticing him more closely, I ob¬ 
served that he had carried his change of caste 
even into the cut of his hair. No longer was 
it “ feathered ” in back in the manner of a 
University Club barber; he was clipped and 
shaven on the neck with his hair thickening to¬ 
ward the top till it became almost a tossing 
mane on the crown. 

“ This is your room, Jerry?” I said. I’d 
been wondering all the time where and how 
he’d been living. 

“ Mine just now,” he replied, looking up and 
down me. His eyes seemed to find satisfaction 
in the sight of me; but he did not give me his 
hand; he did not come closer to me than ordi¬ 
nary nearness in the room made inevitable. I 
realized that he was deliberately holding away 
from me and I realized why. Here he was not 
only hiding from the police, with his life hang¬ 
ing upon every risk of recognition, but here he 
was also playing the part of Keeban; and he 
could enter no more deadly undertaking than 
this of impersonating Keeban, Harry Vine, and 
going out among Keeban’s people. 

Of course he could have attained this perfec¬ 
tion of nuance only through constant keeping 


THE WAYS OF ITS LOGIC 119 

to it and he would be foolish to endanger it by 
jumping in and out of character with each open¬ 
ing of his door. 

“ We can talk here? ” I asked. 

“ What is it? ” 

It was so much, so many things, that I could 
lump them all only in the obvious, emotional 
statement, “ I’ve come to see you.” 

“ Why?” 

Since he seemed to demand a practical rea¬ 
son, “ Shirley Scofield is being paid the insur¬ 
ance money to-day.” 

He knew that. “Yes, she got a bunch of it 
this morning, some yesterday and some a couple 
of days ago. That’s why you tried to look me 
up day before yesterday, was it? ” 

“ Partly,” I said. 

“ That’s all right about her getting the 
money.” 

“You mean she wasn’t in the scheme to get 
the money? ” 

He spoke to me now like Jerry of Astor 
Street days, I was always slower of wit than he 
and he was used to telling me obvious things as 
he did now. “ Of course she was after the 
money, Steve.” He stopped a moment and 
then said, “ But not that way.” 


120 


KEEBAN 


“ What way? ” 

“ By the ‘ bump off’; she wasn’t up to it. 
That was shoved on her, Steve; and she’s 
sore.” 

“ At whom? ” 

He tapped his chest. “ Our friend. Sit 
down, Steve.” 

I sat on the chair; he on the bed. 

“ He’s traveling fast, Steve.” 

“ Who?” 

Again he said, “ Our friend. So far as I can 
trace him back, he hadn’t been worse than a 
‘ gun ’ up to that job on Dorothy Crewe; that 
was a borderland act for him. He started it out 
like a ‘ gun ’ and finished up rough. With Win 
Scofield, he was all the way a 4 gorilla ’I” 

“ Gunman you mean by ‘ gun ’ ? ” I asked. 

“ Almost the opposite, Steve. A ‘ gun’s ’ a 
guy who gives action to his brain instead of to 
his cannon; he gets by without the shootings. A 
gorilla’s a guy that goes in for the rough stuff. 
A girl doesn’t worry when she’s got a good 
‘gun’ for her gentleman friend; she’s per¬ 
sonally as safe with him as with any church 
warden. Ele hasn’t any hankering for doing 
a croak; and he hasn’t any habit of getting out 
of his troubles that way. But when a guy that 


THE WAYS OF ITS LOGIC 121 


a girl goes with takes to being a gorilla, the 
skirt’s got to watch her step with him. She 
knows it.” 

“ Where is he now, Jerry? ” 

“ Do you suppose I know? ” 

“ You must know more than I do.” 

“ That’s right.” He tossed me a box of ciga¬ 
rettes. “ Smoke if you want. Nobody’ll come 
for a while. I allowed us a little time, particu¬ 
larly so you may become better acquainted with 
my friend—” again he tapped his chest — 
“ Keeban, my childhood companion, more re¬ 
cently the robber of Dorothy Crewe and the 
bumper off of old Win Scofield. He seems not 
to be indigenous to Chicago soil, Steve. Assum¬ 
ing that he was — and therefore is — a twin of 
mine, it is likely that my parents were merely, 
visiting here when they loosed me in the park, 
and you and I met, old Top. Anyway, they 
must have moved on to New York, for my 
friend made his reputation there. 

“ I haven’t been able to gather anything 
about my own people — no more than you can 
judge from him and me. Maybe they turned 
us both loose at the same time and I walked 
into the hands of a wholesale grocer while a 
gerver picked him up.” 


122 


KEEBAN 


44 Gerver?” 

44 Safe-blower, Steve. My friend seems to 
have made his start as a ‘ peterman ’ and then 
branched out. He’ll blow a peter yet, they 
say, to keep his hand in; and he packs with 
him, when he thinks he’ll find trouble, the peter- 
man’s tube of his trade — a little, corked bottle 
of soup for emergencies, Steve. Nitro-glyce- 
rine, that’s all. Interesting idea, what? ” 

44 The nitro?” 

“No, that the difference between us is the 
direction we wandered when we got loose — or 
were turned loose — twenty-five years ago in 
Lincoln Park. I walked straight into the bean 
business and he into blowing safes. Was that 
all there was to it — the angle our feet took 
across the grass in the park? What do you 
think, Steve? ” 

I shook my head. 

“ A man likes to think with Shakespeare 
that he is master of his fate,” Jerry went on, 
“ and that fault or strength is in himself, not 
in his stars. There is no bunch of bunk I hate 
worse than that environment is to blame for 
crime and the individual has almost nothing 
to do with it.” 

“ Give Shakespeare credit for thinking it out 


THE WAYS OF ITS LOGIC 123 

further,” I said. * Julius Caesar’ always was a 
favorite of mine and one thing I knew. “ He 
said, ‘ Men at some time are masters of their 
fates: the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars 
but in ourselves.’ ” 

Jerry nodded. “ That’s right. My friend’s 
clever; he can see now, if he couldn’t when he 
was younger. Then there’s something else — a 
twist in his brain that’s not in mine? Yet I 
don’t know: maybe we’re identical, inwardly 
as well as outside. Maybe the difference is that 
I never knew what it was to want without being 
able, lawfully, to get. The cards are stacked 
in this game of civilization which we play.” 

That hit one of my pet ideas, as I’ve men¬ 
tioned; so I objected, “No, they’re not.” 

“ I remember what you think, Steve. I liked 
to think it too; but now I’ve gone from the side 
the cards favor to the side that gets the worst 
of the deal. What in the devil is law, Steve? ” 

“ Law? ” I said. 

Again he laughed. “You said that, old 
Top, as though I’d asked ‘ What is the sun?’ 
It shines on you so, Steve; to ask about it is to 
you the acme of foolish questions; but it’s not 
to the man who’s brought up under the cloud. 
What is law? I never even looked up a die- 


KEEBAN 


124 

tionary definition till I got talking to some of 
my present friends; now here’s just what Web¬ 
ster says: ‘ A rule of conduct established by an 
authority able to enforce its will.’ That’s all 
there is to it—a set of rules drawn up by the 
first men on the ground, who’ve grabbed every¬ 
thing in sight, and who naturally want to per¬ 
petuate and increase their possessions. Hence 
they fix up a lot of rules in their favor which 
they call law. If you come along later, and 
are boob enough to believe it’s best to work 
with them, you’re a good lawful citizen; if you 
carry a few ideas of your own, and mean to get 
ahead without asking anybody’s permission, 
you’re a lawbreaker.” 

That peeved me; he saw it and smiled. 

“ I’m quoting, Steve; quoting.” 

“ Quoting who? ” 

“ Oh, philosophers with any number of ali¬ 
ases. There’s no philosopher like a flat-worker 
or a good gopher man. In the first place, 
they’ve plenty of time to think; their hours of 
actual effort are short, if rather intense; and be¬ 
tween them are periods of leisure which may 
become decidedly protracted, if they’re picked 
up. Those who complain that the ancient 
Greek art of dialectics is declining simply con- 


THE WAYS OF ITS LOGIC 125 

fess the constriction of their acquaintance. Soc¬ 
rates— so I am convinced, Steve — was a bur¬ 
glar who’d served about two terms when he 
got so good that Plato picked him up, covered 
his past and wrote him down. Possibly you 
noticed in the delicatessen the other day a friend 
of mine not lacking in muscular develop¬ 
ment -” 

“ Oh, the dyke-keeper! ” I said. 

“ What? ” 

I explained. 

Jerry smiled; he knew my ways. “ Any time 
you’re overwhelmed with fear that logic lan¬ 
guishes, Steve, start a little argument with him. 
Now imagine a little boy, like me in my white 
dress the day you picked me up, walking into 
hands like his for education.” 

“ Oh, that’s what you’re getting to! ” 

tl You’ve guessed it. Soon you’re likely to 
meet my friend Keeban again — under circum¬ 
stances which I confess I can’t completely fore¬ 
see; yet whatever they are, it can’t be anything 
but a help to better understand his point of 
view. 

“Now here we are or were, Steve — my 
brother and I. I walked into the bean busi- 


KEEBAN 


126 

ness, with its logic, such as it is. What is the 
end and aim of Fanneal and Company, Steve? ” 

“ Why,” I said, “ why to-” 

“ To what? ” 

“ To sell good food.” 

“ Why?” 

“ Why, for people to eat? ” 

“ Your effort is to increase the consumption of 
food, isn’t it? ” 

“ Of course.” 

“You do it for profit, don’t you?” 

“ Of course.” 

“Now which is the fact — that most people, 
here in this country, eat too much or too little? ” 
“ Too much.” 

“ Which is a decided detriment to health and 
longevity, is it not? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Then the actual result of your business, 
which you steadily push for your own profit, is 
to lessen health and shorten life?” 

I laughed now. But he was at me. “ Why 
the laugh, Steve? ” 

“ That’s bunk and you know it.” 

“ Where’s it bunk, Steve? Where’s the flaw? 
Where, if anywhere, did the fallacy creep in? 
Now let us leap to the safe-blowing business. 


THE WAYS OF ITS LOGIC 127 

What, my foster-brother Stephen, is the funda¬ 
mental curse of this country at this time? I’m 
not asking you a question which seeks any 
strange or heathen answer. Let us take only the 
answer that the pulpit itself offers, let us quote 
not only Christ but the economists and sociolo¬ 
gists of our own and other leading conservative 
universities. What has ruined more families, 
softened and destroyed the fiber of more indi¬ 
viduals, especially the young — who above all 
should be preserved — than the accumulation 
of wealth? What else, Steve? ” 

I had no answer. 

“ Now where do men keep their accumula¬ 
tions of wealth?” 

“ In safes.” 

“ Exactly. So, in safes, lies the greatest dan¬ 
ger to the individual and to society. Conse¬ 
quently, what else does he do, who removes the 
contents of the safe and dissipates it, than pro¬ 
tect the accumulator and society from the in¬ 
creasing menace of that wealth which, left in 
the accumulator’s hands, would grow and grow 
till it destroyed all? Who is the friend of so¬ 
ciety, Steve — he who confesses to increasing 
the staggering sum of degenerative diseases 
brought on by overeating which he encourages 


128 


KEEBAN 


for his own profit, or he who, at tremendous 
risk to himself, and with no hope of public 
favor when he succeeds, yet sets himself to 
strike and strike again and again at the very 
source of danger and decay? ” 

Jerry caught his breath. “ Let us remain for 
a moment, Steve, not in the school of Astor 
Street but in that of my brother, Keeban. 

“ I’ve often wondered, particularly during 
these last days, what went through his head 
when he first discovered me. He got a hint of 
my existence, you know, when we were at 
Princeton. He could have guessed where I 
was; and maybe he came out a time or two, 
to look me over. I wonder what he thought of 
me. I was to him a ‘ toff,’ I suppose; to him, 
I was running with those whom he despised. 
For hate and contempt comes into all this, Steve. 
You’ve got to work up your feelings to carry 
on any kind of war, and particularly the most 
personal war of all; you’ve got to talk atroci¬ 
ties and have your hymn of hate. So probably 
he started hating me. 

“ But he was curious about me, too, I bet. 
Of course he saw a big chance to make a great 
clean-up by suddenly becoming me some day — 
or night. There I was, identical with him; I 


THE WAYS OF ITS LOGIC 129 

bet, while he was watching and waiting, he 
wondered a lot about me. 

“ He even had a girl like mine; you saw that 
Christina looked like Dot. He came on here 
with Christina about six months ago and Win 
Scofield met her at a cabaret and went crazy 
over her. We know what happened from the 
Scofield point of view. From Christina’s and 
my friend’s — well, he told her to go to it, pick 
up a million or so and get out. Or maybe 
she’d do it nicely and legally, assert cruelty and 
get a divorce with whopping alimony in the 
most proper way. 

“ Then Fred and Kenyon thought they’d stop 
anything like that; they whipsawed the old 
man out of his control of the company when h t 
was away and had him on an allowance when 
he got home. They thought they were aw¬ 
fully smart. All they did was sentence their 
father; that’s all. Meanwhile my friend turned 
some of his attention back to me, letting the 
well-known mill of the gods do its bit of grind¬ 
ing on the Scofield affair. 

“ Harrison Crewe was arriving in dear old 
Chicago with a nice necklace for daughter 
Dorothy. The newspapers not only appraised 
it but advertised its first appearance with all 


KEEBAN 


130 

details. I was to escort daughter and neck¬ 
lace first to the Sparlings’ where there would 
be a wedding, after which the line of march 
would be down the Boulevard to the Drake. 
Probably my friend was still in Chicago; if 
he’d been called to New York on business, he 
must have jumped the Century and come back 
again with opportunity pounding on his door 
like that. 

“'Well, he arrived and we know what he did.” 

Jerry looked down and then suddenly up at 
me. “Seen Dot recently, Steve?” 

I nodded. 

“ She still thinks it was me? ” 

I had to nod again. 

“You’ve seen her since — ” his voice hard¬ 
ened and he finished, “ the Scofield bump off? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ That was me, too? ” 

“ She thinks, you see,” I said, “ you’re no 
longer yourself.” 

“ Kind of her,” said he. “ Very. Well, I’d 
gathered as much from the papers. I don’t 
blame her. Where were we? ” 

“ He’d got the necklace.” 

“Oh, yes; and Fred and Ken Scofield were 
informing their father’s wife that, after cut- 


THE WAYS OF ITS LOGIC 131 

ting off the old man with an allowance, they 
were also going to let his insurance lapse. Now, 
about that time, a queer thing was happening 
with that young wife — queer if you keep on 
staring at just what you see from Astor Street. 
Christina got a hankering for decency.” 

“ You mean she liked Win Scofield? ” 

“ She liked being his wife — if only for the 
novelty. The old man, for himself, was nothing 
to her. She was crazy about Keeban.” 

“ Yet married Win Scofield.” 

“ 4 My friend ’ told her to. Probably he was 
coming to one of the times when he was get¬ 
ting tired of her, anyway; he took her up, off 
and on; off times, he picked up with other girls. 
So, till he wanted her again, he thought he’d 
park her with the Scofield family and let her 
gather half a million for him.” 

“ What did she think when she first saw 
you? ” 

“ Oh, she knew about me, sure enough. Part 
of ‘ my friend’s ’ plan in planting her in society 
must have been to help his scheme with me; she 
was his inside wire on that job and went through 
with her end so smoothly that no one suspected, 
no one even mentioned her; she wasn’t even 
“ Among those present ” printed in the paper 


KEEBAN 


132 

after the Sparling affair. Undoubtedly she’d 
have gone right through with the arrangement 
rigged on old Win, if ‘ my friend ’ had stuck 
to original prospectus; but Fred and Ken didn’t 
make that possible. And ‘ my friend from his 
point of view, was left with no other course than 
to croak old Win. If he was to maintain any 
sort of discipline, he simply had to do it.” 

“ Discipline of whom? Shirley? ” 

“ For one, among others. My brother,” said 
Jerry, avoiding his previous euphonism of 
“ friend ” and speaking with a queer timbre of 
pride, “ had a leadership to maintain and im¬ 
prove, a certain record of success to conserve. 
A man in his position must, above every one else, 
save his face; he can let no one smile at him. 
Here he had let his girl go to old Win Scofield 
to make him some money and Win’s sons had 
made it impossible, unless somebody croaked 
Win; so Win had to be croaked; not merely for 
the money, but to save 1 my friend’s ’ face. 

“ Now Shirley, on the square, tried to stop 
that; from the time I spoke to you,^ she was 
never against you. It’s right for her to have 
the insurance money that’s paid; she was not 
in the scheme of the croaking; nobody can ever 
show she was.” 


THE WAYS OF ITS LOGIC 133 

“ She accused you to me,” I said. 

Jerry nodded. “ I’ve seen the papers. You’ll 
see something else to-night. Win Scofield’s 
widow has her money; and Harry Vine, my 
friend and yours, Steve — Keeban, we called 
him — he’s saving his face. At the Flamingo 
Feather, the affair will be.” 

“ Flamingo Feather? ” 

“ You don’t know it? Well, neither did I 
a few weeks ago. I dreamed, no more than you, 
that such a spot existed; yet to-night it’s my 
place of fate. For ‘ my friend’s ’ friends go 
there to-night, Steve, to see what he can show 
them. It’s a date; he’s got to be present. The 
Flamingo Feather’s a hall, Steve — one of those 
halls that the police raid with the reserves in 
force, with half a dozen wagons, or leave se¬ 
verely alone. There’s a masque ball on there 
to-night — with fancy figures and favors. 
There’s a celebration on, you see; and some¬ 
thing to expect.” 

“ You going? ” 

“I? He’ll be there, I said. Do you want 
to chance it, Steve? ” 


XI 


THE THIEVES’ BALL. 

The approach to the floor of the Flamingo 
Feather was past a bakery, a pawnshop, a drink 
parlor, all decorous and dreary. Then there 
was a door distinguished by a bracket extend¬ 
ing a black, iron basket in which a yellow elec¬ 
tric bulb glowed. Over the street, this and a 
single iron feather painted flame color made 
a flaunt of festivity. From the door stretched 
a hall, tinted Pompeian red and reaching to¬ 
ward gents’ smoking rooms and the placarded 
penetralia of ladies; upward led iron stairs to 
the ballroom, let by the hour or evening, at rates 
proclaimed on a card. 

I realized, as I entered, that I had heard of 
this place — or at least of its sister ballrooms — 
scores of times. For here revelled those indefi¬ 
nite, intriguing organizations named, by their 
members, “ The Apollo Pleasure Club ” and 
“ The Brothers of Byzas ” (whoever he was) 
and “ the Ten Terpsichoreans,” who from their 


THE THIEVES’ BALL i 35 

handbill, pasted on the Pompeian wall, evi¬ 
dently hoped to enroll, at a dollar per gent 
(ladies with escort free) several hundred pay¬ 
ing guests. In fact, few of the coming social 
functions, advertised in this hall, appeared to be 
exclusive. Yet I might be in error. 

Judging from to-night’s bill, which simply 
said — “ Special — To-night: Mask and Cos¬ 
tume Ball; Get your tickets in Advance — 
Special ” — one might assume a catholicity of 
welcome not sustained by the manner of two 
tall — and masked — gentlemen in the hall be¬ 
side a little table at the foot of the stairs. 

I did not doubt that to-night, at least, there 
had been an exercise of selection by whomso¬ 
ever (they were not named on the notice) sold 
tickets in advance. And here, at the foot of 
the stairs, was a second inspection. Each 
masker, or at least one in every group, lifted his 
cover when passing the table. Jerry did that 
for the two of us; of course he had tickets and 
we were passed and, after checking our outer 
garments, we climbed to the ballroom where 
jazz was playing. 

Jerry was a courtier in doublet and jerkin; 
he was Sir Walter Raleigh as much as any 
one else. I was a monk, Erasmus for choice, 


136 KEEBAN 

in robe and cowl; both of us, as I’ve suggested, 
wore masks; about us everywhere were mask¬ 
ers, wigged Colonials, Barbara Frietchies, Mary 
Pickfords, Caesars, Cromwells, Charlie Chap¬ 
lins; then there were Aphrodites, devils and 
sailors, sashed pirates, queens and kings ad¬ 
dicted not so much to any particular personage 
or period as to an impression of the generically 
royal in their garb. Many, of both sexes, went 
in for mere fantastic innovation, concealing 
electric batteries under silk bodice or skirt, 
switching on green, red and blue lights in their 
hair, on their shoulders and elbows while they 
danced. 

They betrayed a penchant for weaponry, too, 
keeping in decent concealment the short, blue- 
barrelled automatics of contemporary pattern 
but evidencing long, decorative — and yet not 
entirely useless — daggers, rapiers and curved 
cutlasses. 

I had picked my costume partly on the pre¬ 
sumption that it had enjoyed a smaller popular¬ 
ity than other offerings at Leventhal’s, lessor 
of garments; partly I was influenced by its 
exceptional qualities for concealment. There 
appeared to have been, among the gentlemen 
who would have been supposed to have obtained 


THE THIEVES’ BALL 137 

one of those tickets in advance, a peterman simi¬ 
lar to me in height and familiarly known as 
“ Beets ” — I am not sure of the spelling, per¬ 
haps an “ a ” appertained — who had affected 
the monastic in earlier revels. He was, fortu¬ 
nately, a taciturn individual; so nobody ex¬ 
pected me to talk much; and nobody talked 
much to me. 

It was nearly eleven o’clock when we arrived, 
so the ball was already rolling; “the thieves’ 
ball,” the papers dubbed it afterwards; yet, of 
the three hundred persons in the hall at the hour 
of the swiftest rolling, not fifty actually were 
thieves. Not fifty were either thieves or worse; 
not if you counted both sexes, the shoplifters and 
lay “ wires ”, along with the “guns ” and 
“ gervers.” 

So much I had gathered from Jerry during 
the afternoon. The actual go-getter in any soci¬ 
ety is in the small minority; he, or she, supports 
a host of hangers-on; it is only the armchair 
dreamer who flatters himself that he who holds 
him up, who blows his safe, who forges his 
name, must be a fugitive, hiding and cowering 
between his sallies forth with gat, with “ soup ” 
or with pen. Of course, the gunman or the 
gerver goes about his business, keeps his hours, 


KEEBAN 


138 

surrounds himself by friends and family even as 
you and I. He might frequent the Drake or the 
Blackstone for his pleasure, also, but it would be 
too suggestive of business. He, too, requires his 
leisure; so here he was with his friends at the 
Flamingo Feather. 

Maybe a dozen knew what was on that night; 
not more than that, Jerry told me. He vanished, 
Jerry did, after we’d been there an hour, leaving 
me alone with ladies. 

I danced, to mighty good music, with a 
crowned queen of Tudorish bodice, modified by 
electric lights on the sleeves; with a green-robed 
girl of red hair with amber lights on her comb; 
with a white-shouldered Cleopatra, lithe and 
soft in my arms. 

I danced again with Cleopatra and, after mid¬ 
night, a couple of times more and was having a 
better time with each encore. Also I was get¬ 
ting acclimated to the diverting atmosphere of 
that ball. Its manners, of course, were various 
and, as I explained to myself the different de¬ 
velopments, each masker made for himself a 
personal interpretation of his role according to 
his costume; consequently I witnessed the Puri¬ 
tanical portrayed in contrast with the piratical 


THE THIEVES’ BALL 


139 

between which extremes the private lighting 
plants extemporized pirouettes of their own. 

There was plenty of cheek-to-cheek proximity 
of partners; plenty of knee to knee. Occasion¬ 
ally a floor committeeman pried a couple a few 
inches farther apart; but surely it is better to see 
that done than to observe the need ignored. 

Jerry, unless he returned in some new costume, 
remained away from the floor; and I gave up 
momentarily expecting him. I got to having a 
good time on my own account, especially with 
Cleopatra. 

I could not see her face between her brow and 
lips. Through her mask, I got glimpse enough 
of her irises to see that they were blue. Her 
forehead was smooth and white and pretty; in¬ 
telligent looking, too. Her lips were bowed and 
smiled pleasantly and were not too much car- 
mined ; she had a fine little chin, pretty and also 
firm. She’d a lovely neck and shoulders, smooth 
as satin; and she’d small, strong little hands with 
beautiful, pink nails, and slender, shapely feet. 

I’m not given to noticing quite so much about 
a girl; but with this one, I couldn’t help it. She 
was an alluring little crook. I suppose the vizor 
had something to do with it; the hidden always 
beckons a fellow on; but what kept me coming 


KEEBAN 


,140 

was the thought, — what was she doing there? 
What was her line or her lay? If she were 
merely a guest of this ball, whose guest was 
she? 

Naturally, at a masque — and most naturally 
at that masque — people dispensed with intro¬ 
ductions. She was Cleopatra and no one gave 
her a modern name; as Cleopatra she lacked a 
Caesar, though many* were present. She lacked 
even an Anthony; a Magellanic mariner seemed 
to be her rallying point. I don’t know why I 
called the gentleman Magellan; if he’d been 
huskier I’d have called him Columbus. Some¬ 
how I’ve always imagined Magellan quick and 
slight and more given to liquor than Columbus. 
This mariner was; given to liquor, I mean. 
Cleopatra bothered about him for a time and 
then blithely abandoned him, much to my 
benefit. 

“ What shall I call you? ” she asked me. So 
far, we had got on without names. 

“ Erasmus,” I said, to try her as much as any¬ 
thing. 

To my amazement, she knew the old boy. 
“ Holbein would be thrilled by you.” And, as 
she danced with my arm about her, I could feel 
that she was sizing me up anew. I had said 


THE THIEVES’ BALL 141 

“ Erasmus ” as I might have said Claude or 
Skeezix; but since she knew Erasmus, naturally 
she wondered how I knew. Beets, my prede¬ 
cessor in these garments, would not have known; 
but Cleopatra had known for some time that I 
was not Beets. 

About that time came a diversion; in fact, the 
diversion. Sir Walter Raleigh, escorting an 
Elizabethan lady, appeared on the floor. Both 
were masked; but under the garb of Raleigh 
were the limbs of Jerry; and I knew the Eliza¬ 
bethan lady, too. Here was Christina, come to 
the ball. 

I looked again at her Raleigh, with rapier at 
his side, dagger at his waist. Not Jerry, I told 
myself, with pulses thrilling; here was Keeban. 
This was what I was to expect; Keeban, to show 
off, had carried Christina to the ball. That day, 
she had won the last of her money; this night 
he had regained her, he was to take her away; 
but before going, here was his flourish, his defi¬ 
ance, his display! 

He put his arm about her, and, as they began 
to dance, I heard in the buzz of voices the whis¬ 
per of his name. Here was Harry Vine, they 
were saying; here was Christina. Between 
them, they’d more than half a million; he’d put 


142 keeban 

over his job just as he schemed it. Nobody 
could beat that boy; if they tried to, the sod for 
them. 

It looked like madness for them to be here to¬ 
night; but madness marks the big job. 

Here was Keeban, Harry Vine. He had 
boasted that he would bring his woman, whom 
some thought had gone away from him. Surely 
he had arranged his get-away with her; but 
before he used it, here he was proving that she 
was his. 

But she wasn’t his! At least, so Jerry had 
told me. She’d come with him, but she was, in 
fact, no longer his. Something more was on to¬ 
night than that rapiered and daggered Raleigh 
expected. I danced with Cleopatra, watching 
them dance, and also I looked now for the reap¬ 
pearance of the other Raleigh, who was Jerry. 

The number ended; now clapping; now en¬ 
core. My arms circled Cleopatra; I clasped 
her. Keeban clasped Christina. 

As I watched his arm go around her, so ex¬ 
actly as Jerry’s clasped his partner in the dance, 
I got another jerk. Maybe he was Jerry! May¬ 
be what was to happen between Jerry and his 
“ friend ”, his brother, had happened outside. I 


THE THIEVES’ BALL 


i43 

sent that thought out of my head and watched 
them. 

What a pair they made, she young, lithe, full 
of life, perfect in her soft proportions. I 
thought of how I had seen her singing that night 
before the shooting and how she received me — 
like Recamier, on her couch — afterwards. But 
here she was dancing another theme. And he, 
dancing with her, was quick, graceful, courtly. 
Clearly they had done this dance often together. 
Some one cried out a request and they went into 
a fancy figure. 

The rest of us cleared a circle in the center of 
the hall; we danced slowly about the perimeter 
while they in the middle twined arms, turned, 
confronted each other, flung each other away 
and circled back to clasp again, dancing. 

They had become so professional now, that, 
watching their steps, I forgot for the moment 
that he was the murderer of old Win and she 
had been old Win’s wife, in the plot for the Sco¬ 
field money. Jerry had told me that, when the 
plot turned to murder of her husband, she had 
tried to stop it. Had they fallen out? Well, I 
should see. This was a time not to think, but to 
watch. 

Some one switched the lights off. It proved 


KEEBAN 


144 

the signal for those who had lights in their hair 
and on their dresses to gather inside the circle 
and give their soft, colored glows to Christina 
and Harry, dancing together. 

He seized her, tossed her away, caught her 
again and, before again he tossed her, she altered 
the figure. As he caught at her, she eluded him 
and, laughing, she snatched at the sheath on his 
belt. She had his dagger; and the lights — 
blood-red, green and amber — glinted on the 
flashing blade as she bared it, drew back and 
thrust at him. 

He caught her wrist, as girls about me 
gasped; he held and twisted at her hand but she 
broke his hold and darted away from him. He 
stood a moment, staring; then he grinned at her 
who, off at the edge of the circle, again was 
dancing as if that thrust at him, his snatch just 
in time, his twist and her breakaway all were 
part of the figure. But they weren’t. He knew; 
I knew; many others knew. There, in that 
flash of shining steel, she had stabbed at him to 
kill him. 

Why? Jerry’s words to me gave at least a 
clue. He was her man, who had been a “ gun ” 
but who had become a “ gorilla ”; he had shot 
Win Scofield in her sight, slaughtered him be- 


THE THIEVES’ BALL 


145 

fore her. She had tried to stop that killing; and 
his murder of the old man in his house had been 
Harry Vine’s answer. Also he had served notice 
for her to come back to him; so she had done 
so, — to kill him. 

This was what Jerry meant I should see; this 
was the vengeance of Shirley. Not vengeance 
alone; also an attempt at self-protection. She 
knew, going back to a “ gorilla ”, that sooner or 
later he would kill her. Perhaps she expected 
death from him only a little later that night. So 
she had struck there before them all and, failing, 
made her life surely forfeit. Now, without 
doubt, Keeban — Harry Vine — would kill her. 

Not there, surrounded by that circle, as she 
would have slain him, had her thrust gone home. 
A girl kills a man that way; but not a man his 
woman. This rapiered Raleigh knew that. He 
made no motion to attack her; he merely 
watched her, and he grinned while she danced 
and tried to play it was all pretense. 

Now her partner started toward her; and 
everybody watched him, and watched her, and 
nobody interfered. Nobody thought that, when 
he caught her, immediately and there he would 
kill her. I, at least, did not even imagine that. 
He was moving to capture her now and to carry 


KEEBAN 


146 

her away; and, to these maskers in the circle, 
that was all his own affair as, to them, her stroke 
at him had been her business. I realized that 
had she sent the dagger home, no one would 
have touched her as no one, after she had failed 
and was doomed, would raise a hand to help her 
now. 

She knew it also; and she looked to no one 
for aid. She merely danced away, his dagger in 
her hand, smiling and still playing at pretense. 

Fingers circled my wrist; they were Cleo¬ 
patra’s. Small, strong, intense fingers they were, 
half holding, half warning me. 

I had not been aware that I betrayed, through 
my mask and cowl, the impulse which heated 
me. Of course I wanted to help that girl who 
had struck and failed; I wanted to seize him 
who grinned and stole upon her, and of course 
I knew I could not; and those slim fingers cir¬ 
cling my wrist doubly warned me. Here was 
business between two persons — girl and man — 
which was their own. She still had chance to 
strike again and kill him, if she could; he had 
his right to capture. 

She circled away and he followed about the 
edge of the ring, not gaining upon her. Sud¬ 
denly he snatched a cape from the shoulders of 


THE THIEVES’ BALL 


H7 

a watcher; he wound it about his left arm and, 
with that arm forward to take her stab, he darted 
on her. 

He did it so quickly, so surely, that it seemed 
prearranged. For the moment, it seemed that 
the motion must have been practiced and it was 
all play. Then he was on her; she made a stab 
and he caught it on that bundled cape. With 
his other hand, he had her wrist; he had her. 
No acting in that; no possible pretense. 

It was not play; he had her! The circle knew 
it was not play; some of them would surely save 
her. I must have jerked again; for Cleopatra’s 
fingers pressed tighter on my wrist. 

“Where’s Jerry?” I thought. “What’s he 
doing? ” 

The light was lessening. A girl switched 
off the glows which burned upon her head 
and dress; another did the same; another. 
“Lights!” somebody called; but before the 
room lights could go on, other dancers had dark¬ 
ened the colored bulbs they wore. 

The dagger rang on the floor; and, as she 
dropped it, Christina surprised her partner out 
of his hold on her. She darted back. The circle 
behind her opened and closed. She was through 


148 KEEBAN 

and the circle was all dark. Then some one 
screamed. 

At that instant, I was sure it was Christina; 
I was sure he had her again. Then, I did not 
know. There was a whistle outside. “The 
bulls — bulls — bulls.” 

Cleopatra’s fingers freed my wrist. I groped 
for her but she was gone. “ Bulls — the bulls ” 
men and girls said. No one cried again for 
lights; no one turned them on. In the dark, I 
felt streams of escape in opposite directions. 
Outside somebody was shooting; came shouts; 
now the clanging of patrol cars. Surprise was 
gone. 

I felt myself sucked into an eddy of escape 
repulsed from one side and cast upon the other. 
We reached air and iron stairs. Pistols flashed 
before us; our van cleared the way. I came 
down to the alley pavement and stumbled over 
a man shot or fallen. I crossed the alley and 
reached a passage. A girl’s hand led me 
through and, a block down, we found refuge. 

I didn’t know the girl. I never saw her face. 
It was dark and she left the shed before me. I 
dropped my robe there; and when I walked out, 
the circle of capture had closed and was still 
contracting, not expanding. The police took, 


THE THIEVES’ BALL 


149 

altogether, thirty-six persons, — twenty girls, 
sixteen men. 

The “ bulls ” booked them all but proved able 
to hold nobody. They showed prison records 
against seven but nothing then “ out ” against 
any one. The pick-up, as shown on the picture 
pages, included a Tudor queen, two of the light¬ 
ing plants, a pirate, a Turk, a Caesar but not 
Cleopatra; not even Magellan. Not the Eliza¬ 
bethan Christina, not Ralegh, either Jerry or 
Keeban. 

The raid was made to get Jerry and Chris¬ 
tina; for some one had tipped it that they’d be 
at the Flamingo Feather. The tip told even the 
time. 

I kept wondering about that tip and who gave 
it. Not Jerry, I thought; but where, during the 
end of that evening, was Jerry? And I consid¬ 
ered that it was only after he had gone that 
Keeban had come in, — or the man in mask 
whom I’d called Keeban, and who did that dag¬ 
ger dance with Christina. 

She’d told me, at that time when she lay on 
her bed like Madame Recamier, that Jerry had 
killed old Win; she showed no knowledge at all 
of Keeban. 

You’ll understand I kept my thoughts to my- 


KEEBAN 


150 

self; and I kept to myself that I’d danced at the 
Flamingo Feather that night of “ the thieves’ 
ball,” which was raided. The newspapers, al¬ 
ways keen for the colorful, played up the pic¬ 
tures they took of those twenty girls and sixteen 
“crooks” in costume; but the papers did not 
even know of that dagger dance. Much less 
could they give news of the final consequence 
of it. 

In my mind, when I thought of it, Keeban had 
caught Christina. In my mind, he had her 
somewhere wholly in his power; at his own 
time, in his own manner, he would punish her. 
Imagining this, I would get up and walk about; 
I felt I had to do something. But where were 
they? Where was Jerry? If he were not the 
Raleigh who had returned; if he were not the 
man who had danced, where had he gone? 
What had happend to him? 

I learned, during those days, the completer 
truth of what Jerry had told me of the under¬ 
world. It wasn’t a place; not at all. For the 
places, they all remained. There was the 
Flamingo Feather, dull and drab by daylight 
with its door beyond the bakery, the pawnshop, 
the soft-drink parlor; its light was out; its iron 
basket rusted and filled with wet, melting snow. 


THE THIEVES’ BALL 151 

At night “ The Apollo Club ” — giggling clerks 
— consorted there; and then “The Brothers of 
Byzas ”, who, if he was like his kin, was a team¬ 
ster, apparently. 

Gone, gone from the Flamingo Feather were 
my friends of the masque, vanished as wholly as 
yesterday’s snow from the basket over the door. 

Nor could Klangenberg’s help me. There 
was the door within which stood shelves heaped 
with delicatessen; but a strange child pondered 
over the keys of the cash register which invited 
“ come again.” He knew nothing of Klangen- 
berg who had “ gone away.” Not even the 
“ dyke-keeper ” remained. 

Exploring the alley alone, I penetrated to the 
hooded stairs atop which Jerry had greeted me. 
Now an old wigged woman, crippled and fluent 
of Yiddish, kept vigil there. 

I sought Leventhal, the lessor of my Erasmus 
garb cast off in that shed and never recovered. 
I came offering cash to pay for the robe. He 
took the money, shaking his head; he would 
remember neither the robe nor me. There was 
no tracing, through him, of others who wore his 
clothes that night. They were vanished like 
Villon’s lovers: 


152 


KEEBAN 


Alas for lovers! Pair by pair 

The wind has blown them all away; 

The young and yare, the fond and fair, 

Where are the Snows of Yesterday? 

Young and yare; that was Cleopatra! Where 
was she? Who was she? More than who, whose 
might she be? Well, what good for me to won¬ 
der and worry? What good to feel, by remem¬ 
brance, the softness of her hand in mine when 
we danced; and then the iron warning of her 
fingers on my wrist! What good to see in mind 
the beauty of her shoulder and the smallness of 
her foot. They were gone, all gone; and, if I 
looked at the whole business sensibly, I would 
see that somehow, in ways not yet entirely clear, 
I had been of service in the game of getting for 
Christina and her man insurance of five hundred 
thousand with which they had got away; or he 
had, after taking it from her. 


XII 


I DISCOVER “ THE QUEER.” 

Then Tom Downs was getting married and 
he asked me to usher, so there I was in Caldon’s, 
picking out an after-dinner coffee set to be sent 
to the bride; and a lot I knew about breeds and 
varieties of Hepplewhite and Colonial and 
Queen Anne. Now if setter dogs could only be 
wedding presents, or beans, I’d be right on the 
spot; or a bag of Rio coffee would be all right; 
but the coffee container never meant anything to 
me. So I was about to judge by the good old 
way, which has proved such a help to the high 
cost of living, and order the most expensive 
when I heard a voice that I knew and turned 
about. 

She wasn’t speaking to me but to the clerk at 
the watch-repair counter, which was just oppo¬ 
site the coffee sets: 

“Bad?” she was saying. “Oh, you must 
mean counterfeit. Did I really have one? How 
interesting; please let me see.” And she put a 


KEEBAN 


i 54 

small gloved hand across the counter for the 
bank note which he held. 

A new twenty, I noticed it was, and then I 
looked again at her. Without any doubt, I 
knew her voice; I was absolutely certain I’d 
talked to her; but her face was a complete sur¬ 
prise to me. A pleasant surprise, right enough; 
she was rather a little thing, slender but with 
rounded neck and arms, in actually beautiful 
proportions; about twenty-two in age, I guessed. 
She had nice, clear white-and-pink skin; good, 
bold little mouth and a sort of I-dare-you-chin. 
Her nose turned up the barest trifle, darned 
attractively, and though I couldn’t from the side 
get a view of her eyes, it was pretty plain they 
weren’t easy ones to meet. Anyway, that clerk 
wobbled before her as he apologized that the 
government that week had just warned the 
banks and all big business houses in Chicago 
that new and unusually dangerous counterfeits 
of twenty-dollar Federal Reserve Notes were in 
circulation. 

“ Dangerous? ” said my friend. “ You mean 
the ink’s poisonous or something like that? ” She 
seemed glad she had her gloves on. 

The clerk laughed. “ Oh, it’s quite safe that 
way, Miss Wellington. They mean, it’s an un- 


I DISCOVER “THE QUEER” i 55 

usually good job of counterfeiting; very hard 
indeed to detect. In fact, they say in this case 
the printing and coloring is actually perfect, to 
all practical purposes. It is only the paper 
which is enough off so that an expert, like our 
cashier, suspected it.” 

Miss Wellington opened her hand bag. 
“How interesting! But would you ask your 
clever cashier to look over these bills for me to 
make sure they’re all right? Why, what a 
frightful place Chicago is; I got in just this 
morning from Denver and bought a few things 
at Field’s and along Michigan Avenue, 
breaking a hundred-dollar bill somewhere, I 
can’t remember exactly where, and getting 
change-” 

I heard, of course, but didn’t actually pay any 
attention to the rest she was saying. Miss Wel¬ 
lington of Denver! Now I didn’t know any 
Miss Wellington of Denver or any other place; 
but I did know that girl her voice, anyway. 
She certainly had talked to me; and also, I was 
sure, I knew her hands and her figure, if I didn’t 
know her face. She had one glove off now, feel¬ 
ing the texture of the counterfeit bill in com¬ 
parison with the others in her hand bag, which 


KEEBAN 


156 

proved to be quite all right. Yes; I knew that 
pretty, slender, strong little hand. 

She was going out now, after having given to 
the cashier — who had come up — the informa¬ 
tion that she thought she had broken her hun¬ 
dred dollars at Field’s and got her change there 
and supplying him with her Chicago address as 
the Blackstone Hotel. 

“ Beg pardon, sir,” said the coffee-set sales¬ 
man, “ did you make a choice? ” 

“ Oh, shoot along the Queen Anne,” I said; 
and with the word “ queen ” something caught 
me. 

“ What name, sir? ” said the salesman. 

“Cleopatra,” I said, for I had it; and I got 
under way without worry over the impression I 
was leaving behind me. For now I had placed 
Miss Wellington of Denver, and I knew why I 
was familiar with her voice, with her hands, with 
her figure, and also why her face was a surprise 
to me. For she was Cleopatra, my ci-devant 
partner of the dances at the Flamingo Feather 
where I was ostensibly “ Beets ”, the safe blower 
in a hired Erasmus get-up, and she was mate to 
a lightly built Magellanic gent, who sopped up 
rather too much that evening and yet had proved 
nimble as any on the getaway. 


I DISCOVER “THE QUEER” 157 

I was absolutely sure of her; but she didn’t 
suspect me. I had been all swaddled in robes 
and cowls that night, you remember. Of course 
she’d heard my voice then, but she couldn’t have 
recognized it from anything I’d muttered at 
Caldon’s. I’m one of those mute buyers. So 
here I was, trailing her down Michigan Boule¬ 
vard and wondering what in salvation to do. 

From a Puritanical point of view, I had one 
plain duty; for I couldn’t feel the slightest 
doubt that Cleopatra there a few steps in front 
of me — present alias Miss Wellington of Den¬ 
ver — had never obtained that dangerous twenty 
in change. If she had just participated in any 
financial transaction at Field’s, I felt that Mar¬ 
shall III might just as well mark himself down 
twenty dollars or forty (or some higher multiple 
of twenty) on the total loss page of the day’s 
doings. Unquestionably I should, by all rules 
of citizenship, hand her over to the traffic officer 
at the approaching corner and ask him to blow 
his whistle to call the wagon. 

On the other hand, my acquaintance with 
Cleopatra which now put me in position to sus¬ 
pect her (of course suspect doesn’t half say it) 
had been gained under circumstances which any 
one would call privileged. The whole fact of 


KEEBAN 


158 

my presence at that dance was under a sort of 
sporting condition; and I couldn’t forget how 
this girl, herself, had held on to my wrist, warn¬ 
ing me and keeping me out of trouble. 

I actually owed something to her; but that 
wasn’t what I was thinking of, as I followed her. 
I was watching what a wallop she was as she 
went down the boulevard; much the neatest one 
in sight. She was rather small, I’ve said; and 
trim; wonderfully turned, she was, and dressed 
in plain, tailored things which always look the 
best, I think. I almost collided with a couple of 
my friends — girls — from up the Drive and 
around on Astor. We nearly crashed because 
they were looking, too. Everybody was gazing, 
at least a bit, at Miss Wellington; yet she wasn’t 
endeavoring at all to attract attention. Quite 
the opposite. She simply couldn’t help it. 

She had me heeling her, therefore, without 
the least actual idea of handing her over to any 
one; but also without any intention of letting 
her go. For here I’d found her, after all that 
world of Jerry’s and of the Flamingo Feather 
had vanished into air. 

I began to understand that of course they 
hadn’t really vanished. They’d been about — 
those queens and ladies, those sailors, pirates and 


I DISCOVER “THE QUEER” 159 

lighting plants — but I simply had not known it 
when I saw them. 

Think of the time it took me to identify Cleo¬ 
patra, whom I’d made my chief companion that 
night. 

Now she meant to me, besides what she was 
herself, a chance for getting into touch again 
with all that world. I got to thinking particu¬ 
larly of her friend, Magellan, and looking for 
him in the offing. But if he were about, I didn’t 
recognize him; she spoke to nobody and seemed 
not to be expecting any one. She just kept on 
down the boulevard, minding her own business 
and glancing, as any girl would, into show win¬ 
dows. Then suddenly she stopped, entered a 
store and, during the six seconds she was in 
ahead of me, she did an expert disappearing 
piece. She was gone; absolutely! 

I stood and waited; I wandered about but 
drew a total blank. I taxied down to the Black- 
stone where she said she was staying. I thought 
I shouldn’t have believed that; yet it was true. 
There she was registered — at least somebody 
was registered, “ Doris Wellington and maid, 
Denver.” 

By a little casual questioning, I made sure it 
was she; and by my soul I couldn’t help liking 


i6o 


KEEBAN 


her the better for it. Not only was she stopping 
at our best, the Blackstone, but she had her own 
maid. “ Doris Wellington and maid! ” 

She’d come in that morning from Denver; at 
least that was what she’d told the hotel. She 
was checking out to leave for New York by the 
Century that noon. 

The hotel people, knowing me, naturally sup¬ 
posed me her friend. If she heard of my in¬ 
quiry, I didn’t know what she’d suppose, so I 
asked them not to mention it; and I beat it over 
to my bank to make ready for contingencies in 
case it proved true that she was on her way to 
New York by the Century. 

Also I wanted to work up a little knowledge 
on the counterfeiting game; and I knew just the 
man to help me. Almost every big bank has its 
money crank. Old Wally Bailey holds the post 
at mine. His father founded the place and he 
has so much stock that, if the others won’t make 
him vice-president, he’ll have himself elected 
chief; so they all vote him vice, unanimously, at 
every election and put in half their thought be¬ 
tween times at keeping him so busy at other 
ideas that he can’t gum up the banking game by 
having any time for business. 

They thank God over there whenever a well- 


I DISCOVER “THE QUEER” 161 

raised check drifts in; they rush it right around 
to Wally for it’ll make him forget to insult cus¬ 
tomers for a whole day at a time. A good 
forgery sometimes saves the other officers from 
practically all argument with Wally for a week; 
while if they can just get a good counterfeiting 
job to occupy him, — well, they hardly dare 
pray for good luck like that. 

Everything was humming so and borrowers 
were looking so relieved when I wandered in 
that I knew Wally was happily engaged; and 
soon somebody told me the good news. Fresh 
and unusually deceptive counterfeit bank notes 
were in circulation. Wally wasn’t at his desk; 
he was in the Directors’ Room which he had to 
himself, and all that the others had to do to keep 
him harmless was to send him the new Federal 
Reserve notes as they were pushed into the 
tellers’ windows. 

I found him with a catch of seven bad ones 
already this morning, and the banking day yet 
was young; five twenties, he had on the table 
before him, and two fifties. He greeted me with 
a happy glint in his eyes and shoved the secret 
service circular at me. 

“ Read that first” ; so I read. 

“ Twenty-dollar Federal Reserve Note on the 


162 


KEEBAN 


Federal Reserve Bank of New York; check let¬ 
ter ‘ A ’ plate No. 121; Carter Glass, Secretary 
of the Treasury; John Burke, Treasurer of the 
United States; portrait of Cleveland. 

“ This counterfeit is a steel-plate production, 
with the exception of numbering, and is a par¬ 
ticularly close and excellent piece of work; 
even the scrollwork of the borders is uniform 
and good. The numbering is clean and clear, 
and appears to have been done serially, as no two 
notes yet received bear the same number. It is 
printed on special paper which when flat closely 
resembles the genuine, but is too brittle when 
creased. 

“ The face of the bill is unusually deceptive, 
the seal and numbering being particularly good; 
the faults in the portrait are actually micro¬ 
scopic, consisting in a slight broadening of por¬ 
trait of Cleveland; the texture of the paper, 
however, together with the frequent bunching of 
the silk fiber inserted, should detect this counter¬ 
feit.” 

Wally ecstatically brandished one of his twen¬ 
ties beside one of the fifties before me. 

“ They haven’t got out the circular on the fifty 
yet; they just ’phoned round about it this morn¬ 
ing; and I’ve these two already. Made by the 


I DISCOVER “THE QUEER” 163 

same gang, you see. Same good seal and num¬ 
bering; printed on the same paper; and also a 
steel-plate job. One of the old masters did that, 
Steve; spent weeks and weeks engraving that 
plate to make that reproduction. He’s none of 
your modern, lazy, loafing photo-engravers run¬ 
ning off notes on a hand press. That’s a Janvier 
job, I know. A Chicago job, or a western job, 
anyway. I told Cantrell yesterday. But he still 
thinks it’s a New York piece of work because the 
notes appeared down there first. The photo- 
engraved jobs are done down there; but not 
pure art like this, I told him. Broadway can’t 
produce it; look here.” And he picked up a 
couple of fifty-dollar Federal Reserve notes and 
went on with his talk. 

Up to that moment, money had just been 
money to me; of course I’d noticed, especially 
since the Federal Reserve notes began coming 
out, we’d been developing different varieties; 
and I was aware that each style had figures of 
its own and that some one — usually a particu¬ 
larly rotten penman — took it upon himself to 
sign each issue; also I had observed, as a matter 
of course, that our money ran to pictures of pres¬ 
idents, each labelled so you’d know him, and on 
the other side they printed unlabelled but occa- 


KEEBAN 


164 

sionally exciting little scenes in green like the 
landing of Columbus or the wreck of the Hes¬ 
perus . But the fine points of the art work had 
escaped me. 

Now it appeared that the government hired 
expert engravers, not only for esthetic purposes 
but to make counterfeiting harder. Each issue 
was printed from steel plates, specially engraved 
and most particularly guarded. The paper also 
was specially made by secret process. Now, 
many years ago, occasionally a real artist and a 
patient and conscientious workman turned coun¬ 
terfeiter and cut a steel plate as good as the gov¬ 
ernment’s, and then, if he had a fair paper to 
print on and good ink, he gave the secret service 
a lot of trouble. 

“ Janvier, some of whose fine work was still in 
circulation when I started with the bank, was by 
all odds the best of these,” Wally told me. 
“ The secret service had got him about a year 
earlier; but his souvenirs were still coming in. 
His paper betrayed him; he couldn’t make 
that; he had to use the best he could get and 
imitate the silk shred lines with colored ink; but 
his plates were almost perfect — even to the 
scroll work of the borders, which the govern¬ 
ment makes by special lathes; his seals and 


I DISCOVER “THE QUEER” 165 

numbers were perfect, even under the micro¬ 
scope; and his portraiture wonderful. He 
served ten years and then got out and put an¬ 
other series of gold notes in circulation, almost 
a thousand twenties in spite of being watched, 
before they got him again for ten more years, at 
the end of which he engraved the famous ‘ liv¬ 
ing Cleveland ’ plate from which the big coun¬ 
terfeit issue of 1912 was printed. 

“ He was watched, of course; so he couldn’t 
do the printing; he had to give the plate to 
others who got better paper but not good 
enough; and the government got them all. That 
trial was famous, Stephen; you must have read 
about it.” 

I shook my head regretfully; I was interested 
in football in those days. So Wally told me: 

“The government could not connect Janvier 
with the printing of the money but accused him 
of making the plates. Janvier offered no de¬ 
fence; he knew the secret service had him, but 
his attorneys put up the claim that the plates 
hadn’t been counterfeited at all; they claimed 
that the printers used government plates which 
had been stolen! ” 

“Wait now!” I asked Wally, an old head¬ 
line with a picture trickling through my mem- 


KEEBAN 


166 

ory along with Brickley’s drop-kick scores. 
“I did read that. Janvier — if that was his 
name — jumped up in the witness stand at 
that and stopped the lawyer; he said he didn’t 
mind going back to jail but he’d be damned if 
he’d see his own work classed with government 
plates. When he engraved a portrait of a presi¬ 
dent, he made him look as if he had once lived 

instead of-” my memory gave way just then 

so Wally finished for me: 

“ Instead of like a death mask with the eyes 
pried open. That was Janvier; so they sent him 
back to the Federal prison where they kept him 
till two years ago, when he went blind; they 
operated on him but couldn’t help him; and, 
considering him harmless, released him. But 
he must have got back his sight; anybody can 
see that. Why? For nine years what have we 
had in the way of counterfeiting? Clumsy, 
photo-engravers’ jobs. Some ordinary, dull dub 
takes a camera and photographs a government 
bill, makes a half-tone and smears it with 
green ink and runs off a batch of bills so coarse 
and blurred, compared to engraving from a 
cut-steel plate, that a child can spot it. That’s 
the modern way; easy enough, but they’re lucky 
to get a thousand dollars into circulation be- 


I DISCOVER “THE QUEER” 167 

fore the secret service has them behind bars. 
But here comes back a regular 1 old master/ I 
say; looks like he’s a quarter million passed al¬ 
ready; and he’s Janvier, if he did lose his sight 
two years ago. Cantrell doesn’t think so; he 
thinks it’s a new hand.” 

“ Who’s Cantrell?” I asked. 

“ He’s a secret service expert working here 
on this particular job.” 

It was about ten minutes after this, while I 
was still there, looking and listening, that a 
girl, who proved to be Wally’s private secre¬ 
tary, broke the monotony of the clerks bring¬ 
ing in bad twenties and fifties. 

“ Hello, Miss Lane,” said Wally. “What 
have you? ” 

“ Doctor Lathrom, sir,” reported Miss Lane, 
glancing at a card in her hand. 

“ Lathrom, the big eye surgeon, Steve,” whis¬ 
pered Wally to me. “ I’ve had Miss Lane call¬ 
ing on the eye people since yesterday noon. Go 
on, Miss Lane.” 

“ He operated in August of last year on a 
short, stocky man, French or Austrian, of about 
sixty-five, he thought, who gave the name of 
Cans and who was almost totally blind from 
double cataract which had been previously op- 


168 KEEBAN 

erated upon unsuccessfully. Doctor Lathrom 
restored his sight. I showed the doctor the 
picture of Janvier among six other pictures. 
He picked out Janvier’s.” 

Wally struck his hands together. “ I told 
Cantrell so. I told him it was another Janvier 
job; and that Janvier was in Chicago, too. He 
always cut his plates in Chicago. He couldn’t 
work in the east.” 

“ Does the doctor happen to remember any¬ 
body who might have been with this Gans? ” I 
asked Miss Lane. 

“ Yes, sir. Not only Gans impressed the 
doctor, but his daughter, also. Since Gans was 
blind when Doctor Lathrom first saw him, she 
brought him to the doctor and made all the 
original arrangements. She was about twenty 
— he thinks; he remembers her for unusually 
attractive, of the active type. Dark hair; pert 
nose, he particularly recalled.” 

Wally wasn’t paying any attention to this; he 
already had what he wanted and he was chat¬ 
ting on about the superior artistic inspiration 
of Chicago over Manhattan, even in counter¬ 
feiting. 

“ I told Cantrell it was a Chicago job on the 
plates, anyway; New York is a photo-engravers’ 


I DISCOVER “THE QUEER” 169 

town; an artist like Janvier couldn’t cut a 
plate like that within five hundred miles of 
Broadway. He’d smear it, if he tried to. 
Maybe they printed in the east; or made the 
paper, there; probably did.” 

He was waiting for the switchboard operator 
to get a connection with the secret service so 
he could scream his news at them. 

If he had learned what he wanted, I had, 
too. It was perfectly plain to me, of course, 
that my partner Cleopatra — Doris Wellington, 
with maid, from Denver — was this daughter 
of Janvier, engraver of government notes with¬ 
out the government’s cooperation. Her bit in 
the business was — to employ the convenient 
phrase of the Flamingo Feather — to blow 
out the bad dough, to shove “ the queer.” 

You may gather that this realization did not 
come exactly as a shock to me; in fact, I felt 
rather a relief. Participation in that affair at 
the Flamingo Feather might imply so many 
customs worse than the mere personal issue 
of money that I drifted back to the Blackstone 
with cheer. What I’d found about her family 
certainly might have been a lot worse; yes, a 
whole lot. She’d stuck with her father, evi¬ 
dently. I liked that. 


170 


KEEBAN 


“ Miss Wellington,” they called her at the 
hotel; that meant if Magellan or any other 
young man were about, he was keeping his dis¬ 
tance. Miss Wellington proved to be in; she 
sent her maid down from her room to fetch her 
mail. The maid, who was as French-looking 
and demure as anybody’s, went back and forth 
from the elevator with eyes down. She mailed a 
letter, which I didn’t see, and obtained an en¬ 
velope which bore the address of “ The Ant¬ 
lers,” Colorado Springs. 

A guest hailed her. “ Felice ” he called her 
in Londonish tone. Obviously he was an Eng¬ 
lishman; you might put him down as a polo 
player off his pony and in morning attire. He 
had on one of those pearl-gray velours from 
“ Scott’s,” hatters to H. M. the King, Piccadilly 
and Old Bond Street. A genuine, that was; 
no counterfeit. I knew a bit about hats. His 
cutaway and shoes were from Piccadilly, too — 
from tailor and booter to H. M. the King, also, 
or at least to H. R. H. the Prince of Wales. 
His manners were from the Mall. Apparently 
he was just arrived to meet Miss Wellington, 
having heard she’d dropped in from “ The 
Springs.” But I knew him; he had been the 
mariner at the ball who’d impressed me as 


I DISCOVER “THE QUEER” 171 

being too light to class as Columbus. He was 
Magellan. 

After he’d sent Felice up with the news he 
was here, he dallied before the elevators till 
Doris came down. She’d just left a mirror, 
evidently; smartness and style couldn’t com¬ 
mence to suggest her. She was a stunner. 

“ George ” she called him; and he called her 
“ Doris ”; and he led her into the main dining 
room for luncheon, taking a table at a window 
directly over the Avenue. I sat down alone 
a few tables away. It was nearly twelve; and 
they went at luncheon lightly, — cold lobster, 
mainly. I took the same and, to that extent, 
mingled. I didn’t like George; not at all. I 
liked him even less than Magellan. He had a 
proprietorish way with him which was more 
irritating now that he was sober and out of 
costume. 

She didn’t exactly play up to him; she was 
polite, registering interest in what he said, 
watching the parade of motor cars and pedes¬ 
trians below their window. Have I said it was 
a clear, chilly, pleasant winter day? 

They never even so much as glanced idly 
toward the door through which Cantrell and his 
government men might come. They seemed to 


KEEBAN 


172 

think nothing of that at all, and if either of 
them gave me a thought, neither showed it. 
I heard Doris, in her clear, quick, amused 
voice, telling to George how she had discovered 
a counterfeit twenty in her change at Caldon’s. 

They finished and George paid the check. I 
finished and followed them into the lobby in 
time to see Felice meeting Miss Wellington with 
a receipted bill for their accommodations. Ap¬ 
peared also handbags and a couple of small 
semi-trunks, semi suit cases of the “ week-end 
box ” variety. Porters piled the luggage in 
front of a taxi. 

It became evident that George, having joined 
the party, was going right along. He got into 
the taxi after Doris and Felice. “ Century ” he 
said to the driver. 

The taxis are thick about the Blackstone just 
before train-time for the Century to New York. 
I got a man without the least difficulty. “ Cen¬ 
tury, sir? ” he said. 

“ If that car goes there,” I told him. “ If 
it doesn’t, follow it.” 


XIII 


AND LEARN THE SOOTHING EFFECTS OF FOND DU 
LAC TWINS. 

It went direct to the LaSalle Street station; 
and Doris and George and Felice were stand¬ 
ing in the carriage court watching porters pick 
up their luggage, when I drove in. 

They glanced at me; that was all. At least 
it was all I saw, and they went up to the train 
shed. I snatched a ticket and a coupon for an 
“ upper ” from the Pullman window and went 
through the cars. Doris and Felice had a com¬ 
partment together about the middle of the train. 
George wasn’t with them; he seemed to possess 
a section in a car near mine. He possessed 
also a large, piggy, Trafalgar-Square-looking 
portmanteau, yellow in color. I didn’t know 
where he picked it up. I hadn’t seen it at the 
Blackstone; probably he’d had it sent direct to 
the train. 

I had lost a lot of my prejudice against 
George since I saw him parked in a separate 


174 KEEBAN , 

car from Doris. He looked at me, realized he 
had seen me several times recently and half 
nodded. I nodded and went on. When I 
glanced back, he was drifting rearward to the 
observation car where he sat down and picked 
up an afternoon paper. With as much casual¬ 
ness as I could manage, I dropped into a chair 
nearly opposite. The average Chicago to New 
York twenty-hour-train travel filled the other 
chairs with their varying degrees of self-con¬ 
sciousness and importance. There were the 
usual clothing merchants vociferous over dis¬ 
counts and braiding; there were a couple of 
advertising men lying — unless they were Sar- 
azen and Johnny Black in disguise — about 
how they did the second nine at Skokie; there 
was a pleasant, middle-aged married couple, 
happy to all appearances; there was a mother 
with a son under her thumb; then there were 
half a dozen assorted males varying from the 
emphatic, self-made-man type to mild, chinless 
youths who might be either chorus men or bond 
salesmen. They always look alike to me. 

And they always irritate me so that I did not 
notice that another man was beyond them until 
I observed that George was watching that far 
end of the car. He wasn’t doing it conspicu- 


SOOTHING EFFECTS 175 

ously; he was so subtle about it that if I had 
not been paying particular attention to him, I’d 
never have guessed anybody here was worrying 
him. But some one was — one of those bulldog- 
jaw, assertive sort of chaps that make you think 
right away of the reform candidate, and who 
gives you, at the same glance, the reason that 
reform administrations fail. Not a tactful face 
at all but highly determined. He was about 
thirty-five and was young for his type, I 
thought, until I considered that his type has to 
be younger sometime. Anyway, there he was, 
solid and belligerent, and with a copy of the 
Iron Age before his face. 

I had to look at him eight or ten times before 
I became absolutely sure that he wasn’t reading 
it but, in turn, was watching George when 
George was looking the other way. 

So a man hunt — other than my own (if you 
called my operations a hunt) — was on aboard 
this train; and the stalking was in process be¬ 
fore me. 

It was a woman hunt, too; for of course 
Doris and Felice, forward, must be a part of 
the quarry; and as I reckoned their chances, I 
thought that never a bulldog-jawed, hound had 
run a quarry into a more hopeless hollow log 


KEEBAN 


176 

than the one into which this man of the Iron Age 
had run my friends of the Flamingo Feather 
when he followed them on to the Century. He 
had them where and when he wanted them; 
they simply couldn’t get away. Of course, I 
didn’t know whether or not he was alone, in the 
sense whether he had other operatives with 
him; that made no difference; he had the cloth¬ 
ing merchants and the golfers; the married 
pair, and mother and son; the assorted six with 
the bond salesmen, — if you cared to count 
them; he had a hundred with him whenever he 
wanted them. George and Doris, with Felice, 
had their wits and themselves; and, since there 
could be no possible doubt of the outcome of 
the stalking I was seeing, I couldn’t help want¬ 
ing them to give “ Iron Age ” a run before he 
got them. 

There’s something about authority — espe¬ 
cially when it’s so satisfied and certain and 
when it has all the odds on its side — which 
does that to one. Doris Wellington was not in 
my sight now; but when I thought of her as 
she was at the dance and as I had seen her 
walking down Michigan Avenue, I simply 
couldn’t find any impulse to help old “ Iron 
Age ” over there snap his handcuffs upon her 


SOOTHING EFFECTS 


177 

and put that active, eager, pert little thing be¬ 
hind jail bars to be locked up until she was ten 
years older. 

Now if “Iron Age” could specialize on 
George, I could control my emotions perfectly. 
I’d become somewhat more indulgent toward 
George, I’ve told you; yet I was not wild over 
him, at all. However, if “Iron Age” got 
George, by the same process he’d probably have 
Doris and maid too. So I was feeling almost 
friendly with George when I noticed he was 
standing up. He seemed absolutely casual 
about where he wanted to go. He wandered 
down nearer “ Iron Age ” first, yawned and 
turned a few pages of a Harper’s on the desk 
there; that seemed to make him sleepier and 
he strolled forward out of the car. 

I arose and drifted after him. Through two 
Pullmans he walked ahead of me wholly un¬ 
aware, so far as I could guess, that I was be¬ 
hind him; then, in the vestibule of the third 
car— w ith doors closed before and behind us 
— he half-turned his head. 

“ Old dear, check him,” he said to me. 
“ Here; this door’s jammed.” 

He opened the door before him as he spoke, 
he sidled through and, as he shut it, he dropped 


KEEBAN 


178 

something which engaged the bottom of the 
door. His words certainly were true, then; 
that door was jammed. I couldn’t open it. 

“ Iron Age ” could not budge it, when he re¬ 
placed me at the knob. He must have been 
half a car behind me but I hadn’t even sus¬ 
pected it till he joined me. Together we were 
the better part of three minutes at the door 
before we could enter the next car. George was 
then far forward. 

I stopped in the washroom of that Pullman; 
for I wanted a minute or so alone to think over 
things since George had spoken to me. He had 
hailed me, you see, as a sort of comrade; he’d 
counted on me being with him. 

Now I realized that after Doris had seen me 
at Caldon’s and then they both had seen me at 
the Blackstone and here on the train, they must 
have attached some significance to me. And 
it was becoming plain to me that they made it 
a friendly significance; at least, they did not 
put me down among their pursuers. Probably 
Doris recognized me, not in the sense that she 
knew me for Steve Fanneal, but in the far more 
decoying sense that she realized I had been her 
partner at the Flamingo Feather and that, there- 


SOOTHING EFFECTS 


179 

fore, she could count on me when she needed 
help in this emergency. 

I couldn’t decide how “ Iron Age ” had 
marked me down. He went forward through 
a couple of cars but evidently lost George in 
some washroom or compartment and he decided 
to give up George for the present — there was 
no danger in that; we were skimming along 
about sixty-five miles the hour. Anyway, “ Iron 
Age ” paid me the compliment of returning to 
me in the Pullman smoking room and he 
plumped himself down, emphatically, and went 
about the job of clearing up any doubts of 
me. 

“Now who are you?” he opened, with 
charming directness, a heavy hint of federal 
prison at Leavenworth lurking in his tone. 

I gave him my business card without making 
any fuss and he looked me over and reached, 
with a now-I’ve-got-you gesture, for a copy of 
the Chicago Tribune which somebody had left 
on the leather seat. 

He turned to the produce market page and 
questioned me temptingly: 

“ What do you do in the firm, Mr. Fanneal? ” 

“ Oh, I buy a little,” I admitted. “ Over-, 
look sales some.” 


i8o 


KEEBAN 


“ You buy butter, eggs and cheeses, for in¬ 
stance? ” 

“ Absolutely.” 

“ Good. Now what was centralized Chicago 
yesterday? ” he sprung at me. 

“What score?” I said; and he was sure I 
was stalling. 

“ Ninety-three,” he mentioned. 

“ Not quoted,” I told him. 

“Ninety-two, then!” he dared me. 

“ That was blob, too. But ninety was forty- 
seven and a half; eighty-nine opened at forty- 
five and lifted a half. Ninety-three in New 
York was fifty-five and was a half higher in 
Philadelphia. Butter to Chicago retailers, best 
(ninety-two to ninety-four) tubs, fifty-three, 
prints one and a half more, cartons yet a half 
higher. Good tubs-” 

He held up a hand. I’d looked up butter, he, 
figured; so he skipped down the column. 
“ Eggs? ” he asked me. 

“Extras, first or miscellaneous?” I asked 
him. “ Checks or dirties? Forty-eight to forty- 
nine, and down to twenty-five.” 

I shook him; but that bulldog jaw was not 
for nothing. He still held on. “ Cheese! ” he 
dared me. 


SOOTHING EFFECTS 181 

“ Flats?” I came back at him. “ Twins? 
Daisies? Double Daisies? Longhorns or square 
prints? And Chicago? Or Fond du Lac? 
New York or Philadelphia? Flats at Fond du 
Lac opened twenty-six and three quarters; 
twins-” 

Never had I uttered anything more soothing; 
he had nothing whatever to say. And I’ll say 
this for him, he may have been stubborn and 
hard to convince, but once won over, he came 
all the way. 

“Now exactly who are you?” I inquired, 
as he dropped the paper. “ Private or govern¬ 
ment operative? ” 

He refrained from laying back his coat im¬ 
pressively to display a shining star. Appa¬ 
rently they do that only on the stage, or in the 
“ sets ” out in Los Angeles. Also he lacked the 
scintillating line of language I’d been led to 
expect by the Actors’ Equity. Somehow, since 
actually playing about with Jerry’s friends, I’ve 
lost my feeling for the crook drama. 

“ You may consider me government, if you 
prefer; and you may call me Dibley,” “Iron 
Age ” confided indulgently and with complete 
trust. Hereafter, when any one questions me, 
I’ll remember the stupifying effect of cheese 


KEEBAN 


182 

quotations. I never saw anything lull a mind 
so. The trouble was — or perhaps it was an 
advantage — “Iron Age” now considered me 
not only harmless but probably childish. 

“ Have you any idea who that fellow was 
who wedged the door in front of 3^ou?” he 
asked. 

“ Did he wedge the door? ” I asked, inno¬ 
cently. I wasn’t growing any keener about 
“ Iron Age ” Dibley, but I saw no harm in 
gratifying him. 

“ Didn’t you realize that? Well, he’s Stan¬ 
ley Sydenham — St. James Stanley, he’s some¬ 
times called — the title tapper.” 

“ What? ” I really didn’t know that. 

“ Land swindler. He’s out of Colorado 
State penitentiary last April after serving five 
years in the long house on his last irrigated- 
land transaction. Has he talked to you?” 

“ A few words,” I said truthfully. 

“ Probably he’ll talk to you again,” Dibley 
suggested, in a tone which hinted that he be¬ 
lieved that George, having made a start with 
the simplest person on the train, would prob¬ 
ably continue imposing on a good thing. “ Also 
meet, if you can, Miss Doris Wellington and 
her maid in compartment E of car No. 424. 


SOOTHING EFFECTS 183 

Then don’t let any of them see you and me 
talking together.” 

“ All right,” I agreed willingly. “ But what 
particularly do you suspect? ” 

“ Exclude nothing,” Dibley said and got up, 
the soothing effect of the double daisies and 
Fond du Lac twins still strong upon him. 

I wandered forward to my seat when I dis¬ 
covered that, in my absence, I had acquired 
hand baggage; and I had sense enough not to 
question anybody about it or show surprise; 
I just accepted it; for there it was, — a neat, 
new, creditable-looking suit case under the for¬ 
ward seat in the position usually assigned to 
the baggage of the passenger of an upper berth; 
and it was, beyond any mistake of recognition, 
the neatest and newest of the suit cases which, 
at the Blackstone, had been the property of 
Doris Wellington. 

I bent down, after loafing in the seat for a 
while, and I tried the locks in a careless sort 
of way, as though making sure I’d fastened my 
luggage. The bag was locked; and I shoved 
it farther under the seat and soon went forward. 

I was willing to wager that “ Iron Age ” had 
no hint of that transfer of luggage to me; and 
this was no time to tell him about it. Besides, 


184 KEEBAN 

I already was under government orders which 
I ought to be obeying. So I stepped forward 
to car No. 424 and to the door labeled E and I 
tapped upon it. 

Felice opened it, like the alert little maid 
she was. As I confronted her, I tried again 
to place her in the Flamingo Feather; but I 
couldn’t. She’d been one of the lighting plants, 
maybe. 

Then I saw Cleopatra of the Flamingo 
Feather, Doris Wellington of Caldon’s and the 
Blackstone and Michigan Boulevard, the 
daughter of Janvier, engraver of plates and her¬ 
self shover of the queer. She was alone with 
her maid in the compartment. 

“ Can I come in? ” I said, as she gazed up at 
me from her seat. 

“ Why, certainly; come right in,” she said 
immediately, for all the world as though she 
was doing nothing there but waiting for me. 


XIV 


I TAKE GOVERNMENT ORDERS. 

SHE nodded to Felice who admitted me and 
went out. Felice closed the door and, as I 
remained standing, Doris invited me to sit 
down. 

“ You remember me? ” I asked her. 

“ Erasmus? ” she said. “ The thriller of Hol¬ 
bein? Certainly.” 

I dropped upon the seat opposite her and, 
as I gazed at her, she gazed at me and con¬ 
tinued, “ Also we were both at Caldon’s, as 
well as at the Blackstone, weren’t we, Mr. 
Fanneal? ” 

“ You not only remember me but you know 
me, then.” 

“ Certainly. Don’t you know me? Or what 
were you doing at the bank? ” 

“ How’d you know I went to the bank? ” 

She smiled pleasantly—pleasantly as the 
Dickens. “ Don’t you also know me? ” she 
repeated. 


KEEBAN 


186 

“ You’re Janvier’s daughter!” I blurted. 

“ Excellent!” she approved me and I felt 
like a boy in school. 

She had been leaning slightly forward, not 
exactly tense, not at ease, either. Poised was 
the word for it; she’d been poised ever since 
I entered. Now she sat back more comfort¬ 
ably, being no longer in suspense about how 
much I knew. 

“George was your friend Magellan?” I 
asked. 

“ That’s what you named him.” 

“ Felice also was present at the Feather?” 

“ She was the one who led you into the shed.” 

“I’m indebted,” I acknowledged; and con¬ 
versation languished. 

For a second more I stared at her, as gay and 
piquant a little thing as ever a twenty-hour- 
train boasted; then, decidedly stumped as to 
my next step, I stared a while out the window. 

Pleasant, Indiana winter scenery was skip¬ 
ping past us. There was clean, light snow on 
the fields through which stuck brown cornstalks, 
in those great, even patterns which so intri- 
guingly alter as you dash past. There were 
frozen brooks with ice-encased willows bent over 
them; there were lots of agreeable looking 


I TAKE GOVERNMENT ORDERS 187 

farmhouses and farm people Fording to and 
from little crossroads towns which looked idyl¬ 
lic, rather, whatever the facts may be. 

“ Has Sinclair Lewis spoiled this sort of land¬ 
scape for you?” Doris asked me suddenly, as 
though reading my mind. 

“I’m damned if he has for me!” I said 
sincerely. 

She brought her small hands together. 
“ Good! Nor has he for me. Poor fellow, if 
he really feels as he writes, what a world he 
lives in! I imagine him riding through lovely 
country like this with shades drawn or else 
emitting low, melancholy moans as each habita¬ 
tion heaves in sight. Now I like to think of 
Willa Cather’s people when we’re whistling 
through tank towns.” 

“ So do I,” I said, agreeing again. “ They’re 
there; they’re hearing the whistle. You meet 
’em. You ever been in a tank town? ” 

“ When I was a child, I lived in one,” she 
told me; “when father was serving his second 
term in the 1 long house ’ at Leavenworth.” 

She might have said his second term in the 
House of Congress, from the way she spoke. 
No shame in it at all. Yet it brought me back 
to business. For a minute she had been just 


KEEBAN 


a girl, mighty pretty and bright and pleasant 
and with tastes and distastes, both, which I 
liked. 

She’d known about Erasmus and Holbein 
when we talked at the ball, you remember; 
now she knew about the same books I’d been 
reading. Likely she’d dipped into “ This Free¬ 
dom ” too, in order to help herself decide 
whether, after marriage, she should drop busi¬ 
ness for the sake of the children or should keep 
right on to help husband. 

Probably, in Chicago, she’d seen “ Light- 
nin’ ” and “ The Hairy Ape ” and heard Galli- 
Curci and Chaliapin. Of course she had. A 
crook can’t be crooking all the time; she’s 
at the normal round most of it. But I’d never 
realized that till I took a little leisure to think 
it over. Now when you say a person’s a coun¬ 
terfeiter, for instance, naturally you think of 
him or her, or both of them, crouching some¬ 
where covertly together, printing off their 
money and then slipping out, with many glances 
around, to convert it into groceries and some of 
our ordinary authorized currency. But actu¬ 
ally, very little of their time may be spent so. 
Most of it goes into just living, — maybe look¬ 
ing at movies, at dance halls or driving around; 


I TAKE GOVERNMENT ORDERS 189 

or at the Art Institute, a good play or two, 
the opera, and maybe a lecture also, according 
to taste. I’ve heard of a gerver, lately, who 
even made it a habit to attend Sunday-evening 
club talks; and he was crazy over Burton 
Holmes. 

So here was a girl like any other I knew, 
only quite some little quicker and pleasanter 
and better looking, with nothing really strange 
about her except her proclivity for passing out 
the bank notes father gave her. She knew it 
was wrong, of course, so very wrong that, for 
it, she ought to be shut in the “ long house ” at 
Leavenworth herself, serving her own long 
term. 

But I had not the smallest impulse to put 
her there; quite on the contrary. In fact, I 
imagined, at that moment, that I heard some¬ 
body trying to listen at the door; and, thinking 
it was old “ Iron Age,” I felt myself going 
definitely to her side. Nobody was going to 
shut this girl up in prison for ten years. I was 
going to do something about her; but not that. 
I had no idea of shifting responsibility. Not at 
all; I was going to see to this business myself. 

I got up and opened the door, while she 


KEEBAN 


190 

watched me. Nobody was there and I sat down 
again. 

“ I’ve called on you by orders, I think you 
ought to know,” I told her. 

“Government orders?” she said. 

“ That’s it.” 

She feigned a shudder, prettily. “ My soul! ” 
she said. “What I’ve told you! Now you’ll 
arrest us all, I suppose! ” 

I laughed, for I felt mighty good. There 
was no denying it; I felt as happy as ever 
I had in my life; happier on some counts; on 
others, of course, there was my knowledge of 
her character and the chances she was running. 
But the chances only made it more exciting for 
me to like her. 

Obviously, I’d let her see she’d hooked me; 
she could feel me on the line. Yet she hadn’t 
me in the net — not quite. 

“ I’d gladly arrest George,” I said. “ And 
lock him up for life.” 

“ Why? ” 

“ Because you care about him.” 

“Oh, do I?” 

And then, for no more reason than that — 
but you’d have understood it, had you heard her 


I TAKE GOVERNMENT ORDERS 191 

voice — I felt better yet. I switched the sub¬ 
ject back to business. 

“ I’ve accumulated some hand baggage,” I 
mentioned. 

“ Yes. Don’t you want it?” 

“ That part’s all right,” I said. “ But what 
to do with it? It’s not a gift, I take it.” 

“ No.” 

u I see. You expect a search. Meanwhile 
I’m to have the bag and then give it back to 
you.” 

She nodded; and there she proved she knew 
I was not in the net; for instead of asking any¬ 
thing final, one way or the other, she merely 
suggested, “ Think it over a while, won’t 
you?” 

I promised and got up; for she’d put in 
that a hint of dismissal. Then I remembered 
Dibley. After being in her compartment all 
this time, I had to bring to him something more 
tellable than our talk so far. 

“ George is in on this game with you?” I 
asked. 

“ Why do you want to know? ” 

“ I want to,” I said; and she told me, “ No; 
we’re just going on together.” 

“ He has a lay of his own, then? ” 


192 KEEBAN 

She avoided direct answer to that. “Well, 
he’s still a young man,” she said. “ He hasn’t 
retired; so naturally you’d suppose so, wouldn’t 
you? ” 

“ All right. Now as well as I can guess, old 
“ Iron Age ” — you know who I mean? ” 

She nodded. 

I went on. “ He’s aboard because George is. 
He knows him; but he doesn’t know you. I’m 
here to find out about you. What shall I tell 
him? ” 

“ That we’re getting off at Cleveland, please.” 

“ What? ” I said. “ Are you? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ And you want me to tell him that? ” 

“ If you’ll be so good.” 

I waited with my hand on the knob. “ I’ll 
see you again.” 

“Oh, please do!” she invited; and, feeling 
flushed and mighty good, I stepped into the 
corridor and drifted to the rear. 

My new baggage was still under my seat in 
my Pullman but George was lost to sight. I 
wouldn’t have put it past Dibley to have 
locked him up somewhere but that didn’t seem 
to be the case when I encountered old “ Iron 
Age ” in the door of the smoking room of one 


I TAKE GOVERNMENT ORDERS 193 

of the last Pullmans. Rather, he encountered 
me, reaching out and dragging me in behind 
the curtains. 

“ Now what have you found out? ” he went 
after me with his delightful tact. 

“ She’s a charming girl,” I assured him. “ I 
called at her compartment, as you suggested, 
and pretended we had mutual acquaintances 
and got away with it.” 

“ You probably did not,” said Dibley, to take 
me down from the hang-over of satisfaction 
which he detected on me. 

“ She let you in because you look easy. What 
did she tell you? ” 

“ She’s a low opinion of Sin Lewis.” 

“Who?” said Dibley. 

“ But she’s keen on Miss Cather.” 

“ Who?” 

Sin Lewis, so put to him, seemed to sug¬ 
gest somebody, possibly one of similar name 
who was on Dib’s list for rum-running or using 
the mails to defraud; but Cather wasn’t on his 
cards at all. 

“They write books,” I explained. “We 
started talking about books.” I thought it just 
as well to use the truth as long as possible. 

“Books!” he jeered me. 


KEEBAN 


194 

I remained polite. “ How would you have 
started?” I asked courteously. “Something 
like this? ‘ Good afternoon, Miss Wellington 
or whatever your real name is. I suspect you’re 
a crook but for the moment don’t place you. 
Now if you’ll just tell me-’ ” 

“ Drop it,” said Dib, not agreeably. 

I obliged. 

“ Now forget the start,” he told me. “ What 
did you get to? ” 

“ Oh,” I said. “ I found one thing out you 
want to know. They’re getting off at Cleve¬ 
land.” 

“What makes you think so?” 

“ She told me so.” 

Old “Iron Age” gazed fixedly out of the 
window with the thought in his head (if his 
expression meant anything) of pulling the cord 
to stop the train if we happened to be pass¬ 
ing an institution for the feeble-minded; but all 
was farm scenery, so I was safe. 

“ Thank you so much,” he said to me feel¬ 
ingly. “ It was always possible that they would 
try to escape at Cleveland; so it is of some ad¬ 
vantage to know they’re going on.” 

He released me after a few more words and 
I went to my section. I had his permission to 


I TAKE GOVERNMENT ORDERS 195 

continue my acquaintance with Miss Welling¬ 
ton ; but it was plain that he wasn’t depending 
much on me. He was taking to telegrams, 
scratching off any number of yellow sheets to 
go from the next stop. 

It reminded me that, in my preoccupation at 
keeping Doris in sight after I found she was 
leaving the city, I hadn’t ’phoned my office. 
I had thought I’d wire; but now I decided 
not to. 

I didn’t want Dibley to have any chance to 
oversee the fact that this trip was a last inspira¬ 
tion of mine. I immersed myself, ostensibly, 
in cost estimates of our new can and bottling 
plant which I happened to have in my pocket, 
while I felt' myself sinking deeper and deeper 
into this game I’d entered with Cleopatra Doris 
Janvier. 


XV 


IN WHICH I ASSIST A GET-AWAY. 

SHE came into my car, blithe and smiling; at 
least she smiled at me. Every one looked up 
and every one, seeing that smile for me, put me 
down as lucky, I know. When she was past 
and out of the car, I could feel them gazing 
at me and wondering what I’d done to deserve 
such a smile. 

She was a gay, delightful maid. Suppose 
that, not having had the advantage of acquaint¬ 
ance at the Flamingo Feather, I had met her in 
an ordinary way. I’d have been mad over that 
girl. Heaven salvage my soul, I was anyway. 

She had a trick of playing up to me, which 
probably she used with everybody, but I never 
really saw it except with me. Anyway, she 
did it with me; and nobody else ever did. It 
was her trick of looking up quickly, when I 
was about to say something, and smiling in that 
pleasant way of hers (pleasant doesn’t half do 
it; but it has to go at that) as if she was always 


I ASSIST A GET-AWAY 197 

sure of something good every time I talked and 
as if she liked my line and me. When you’re 
decidedly slow and ordinary, that makes quite 
a hit. 

I sat figuring out her life. Put her down as 
twenty-two; then she was born during the year 
Janvier was out after his first term in the “ long 
house ” and while he was busy engraving the 
plates which sent him in again. Some one — 
she hadn’t said who — took her into the coun¬ 
try for ten years. Maybe she had a mother 
then; maybe not; her mother had dropped out 
somewhere. She was about twelve, then, when 
her father got out again and began his famous 
“ living Cleveland ” series of engravings. 

Twelve, they say, is the child’s most impres¬ 
sionable age; the parent or guardian molds the 
future then. 

Now I knew nothing about the guardian, 
when the parent was in the “ long house,” but 
I had considerable information about father; 
and I could imagine him emerging from the 
pen all filled with eagerness to be back at his 
game of showing up the government engravers 
and of getting away with what he’d tried 
twice. 

Wally Bailey had given me a graphic glimpse 


KEEBAN 


198 

of Janvier and his aim which, from one point 
of view, was actually a pursuit of perfection. 
What Wally suggested was that Janvier wanted, 
more than anything else, the satisfaction of do¬ 
ing the thing which had stumped him. That 
was what he wanted his sight back for, — to 
have a go at it again. And here he had^it. 

His daughter was helping him, naturally. 
She’d been born and bred to his business and 
surely had caught something of the spirit of 
her father who wouldn’t give in, in spite of 
three terms, till he’d shown up the government. 

I thought of what Jerry had told me of the 
Socratic genius of gervers and housemen; un¬ 
doubtedly counterfeiters had their talent for 
dialectics too. 

It might go something like this: the print¬ 
ing of a little extra money would not directly 
injure any individual. In fact, there was quite 
an argument whether it damaged people in 
general at all. 

Many highly approved people were openly 
in favor of a freer issue of currency without 
bothering whether a gold or silver dollar was 
behind every bank note. Mr. Ford and Mr. 
Edison themselves had spoken for a scheme 
which, while not similar to Janvier’s system, 


I ASSIST A GET-AWAY 199 

yet had sent the good bankers into frightful 
attacks of financial hydrophobia. 

Mightn’t Janvier show plenty of authority to 
suggest that he wasn’t in a bad business at all? 

And suppose he compared it with other busi¬ 
nesses; mine, for choice. What was the harm 
in shoving out a little informal currency com¬ 
pared with the damage in passing out drugged 
and adulterated food, which many a first fam¬ 
ily has done? 

Then compare it with the coal brokerage 
business, from which many of my firmest friends 
are fat. What did they do for their profits, 
during a late, lamented shortage, but hold a 
few carloads of coal back from the market and 
away from people freezing for it so they could 
whoop the price a little more? Wouldn’t every¬ 
body be a bit ahead if these people, who haven’t 
the slightest fear of any “ long house,” had 
stayed out of the coal business and simply 
printed their own money for their profits and 
shoved it into circulation without harming 
anybody? 

You see, as I thought it over, it didn’t seem 
strange to me that Doris Wellington could smile 
and smile at me and not feel herself a vil- 
lainess at all. 


200 


KEEBAN 


I wondered, from time to time, exactly what 
was in that nice, new suit case under my feet. 
A few hundred thousand in neat, new bills, I 
thought; or possibly plates. Maybe both. 

That suit case kept bothering my bean- 
business conscience. It was decidedly one mat¬ 
ter to like Doris Wellington and wish her to 
stay out of the clutches of old “Iron Age”; 
but it was something quite up another street to 
take charge of that handbag full of cash and 
plates and deliver them at destination for her. 
Obviously, this was what she meant me to do. 

The day was waning; and all lights were on 
as we drew into Toledo, where old “ Iron Age ” 
sent his sheaf of telegrams over to Western 
Union. He received a couple of yellow enve¬ 
lopes too. I saw him strolling on the platform, 
reading enclosures and watching the doors of 
the train. He was developing a more menac¬ 
ing look. 

Neither Doris nor George got off; Felice 
did, flirting expertly with one of the clothing 
merchants. “ All aboard.” We were going 
again. Cleveland, the next stop. 

In the observation car, I found “ Iron Age ” 
ponderously on duty beside Doris who was 
reading Harpers. A good touch that, I 


I ASSIST A GET-AWAY 


201 


thought; there’s something so disarming about 
Harper’s . But it wasn’t Harper’s alone which 
made the effect. There was George a couple 
of seats away and he was reading the Atlantic 
Monthly , with Galsworthy’s “ Forsythe Saga” 
ready beside him for good measure, yet he 
didn’t appear half so innocuous. 

This was probably because he wasn’t. The 
more I looked at George, the more I questioned 
his general character; but the more I gazed at 
Doris, the surer I was that — in all but one 
of the essential senses — she was a “ good ” 
girl. Looseness of living simply wasn’t in her 
make-up. 

You couldn’t associate her with anything per¬ 
sonally depraved or disagreeable. She’d no 
more steal a diamond ring, left in the ladies’ 
wash room, than my mother, I felt certain. 
No; I was confident that her dereliction was 
highly specialized to the subject represented in 
that suit case of hers under my seat. 

I wanted to talk to her about that and about 
other topics; but old “Iron Age” was assert¬ 
ing a priority claim just now. 

He looked up at me and cut me dead, signi¬ 
fying of course that just now he and I weren’t 


202 KEEBAN 

to know each other. Doris nodded to me and 
I to her and I found a chair opposite. 

Watching Dibley, I perceived that he was in 
the throes of opening a casual conversation. Of 
course Doris perceived it, too, and about a min¬ 
ute after I sat down, she dropped her Harper's , 

Old “ Iron Age ” dove for it and restored it 
to her, pompously. She thanked him. 

He said, “ You’re entirely welcome. You’re 
going to New York? ” 

“ Oh, no,” Doris told him. “ We’re off at 
Cleveland.” 

“ Iron Age ” gave a glance at me, which elo¬ 
quently said, “ You see, you believed that. Now 
watch me.” 

I watched them both and George, too. 

Evidently she’d told Dibley what she wished 
and she was at her Harper's again, as though 
she enjoyed it. George was at his Atlantic but 
he was poised; oh, decidedly poised. 

“ Iron Age ” had two options, either to stay 
silent or start something crude like an arrest. 
But I doubted whether, in spite of his tele¬ 
grams, he had enough evidence yet. So that 
was as far as he got in the light talk; and 
he’d jeered at me! 

A waiter from the dining car appeared with 


I ASSIST A GET-AWAY 203 

the usual word for six o’clock; and Doris got 
up. 

“ We’re going in early,” she volunteered to 
me, “ since we’re off at Cleveland.” 

This gave Dib another cue to rehearse his 
superior glance at me. 

George followed her out of the car and Dib- 
ley beckoned me over to him. 

“ Get her talking again,” he told me. “ Leave 
him to me.” 

When I found her seated alone at a table 
for two in the dining car, I interpreted Dib’s 
orders liberally. She smiled at me and, when 
I asked, “How about my sitting here?” she 
said, “ Oh, I’d like it! ” So there I was across 
the table from her, ordering her supper and 
mine together. 

There’s something about that — the break¬ 
ing of bread together, you know — which 
rather does more than you’d ever suspect unless 
you’ve tried it under conditions like mine. We 
not only broke bread; we broke a full portion 
of broiled white fish between us, another of 
cauliflower au gratin. I served those while she 
poured our two cups of orange pekoe from the 
same little pot and, for both of us, she mixed 


KEEBAN 


204 

salad dressing of her own in a bowl. The best 
dressing, by the way, I’d ever tasted. 

She’d the prettiest hands I’d ever seen; and 
to have them doing things for me! 

Occasionally, but with rapidly lessening fre¬ 
quency, I wondered about George,— why he 
didn’t show up for supper and to what I’d 
left him with Dib. I ventured to ask Doris 
about him. 

“ Oh, he’s not hungry,” she assured me. 

As I remembered him, he hadn’t looked it; 
he’d only looked worried, whereas she didn’t at 
all. She had true nerve, you see. 

That dinner was so delightful that I longed 
to forget that she was playing for her liberty 
for the next ten years. I didn’t want any other 
element in this but just her and me. 

It ended with the check which she let me pay 
without silly argument; then we had to get 
up, and never more reluctant feet than mine 
moved from a dining car. 

She went through the Pullmans in front of 
me; at each door, I came beside her, opened it; 
for a moment we were close. I hoped we were 
going to her compartment; but she surprised 
me in the vestibule of the third car rear from 
the diner. 


I ASSIST A GET-AWAY 205 

No one was following just then; the doors on 
both sides were tightly shut. 

She turned and looked up at me. “ Which 
is it? ” she asked, straight. 

I knew what she meant; and at that second 
I suddenly decided. “ I keep your suit case,” 
I said. 

“ And you’ll give it back to me? ” 

“ Where will you want it? ” 

“ New York. I’m off at Cleveland, as I said, 
but I’ll come to New York later.” 

“ I’ll take it there for you,” I said, and it 
was in the manner of an agreement, “ if I pos¬ 
sibly can; and I will give it to you under one 
condition.” I waited. 

“ Nobody’s listening,” she urged me. 

I told her. “ It’s this. I bring it to you, 
alone. I’ll be alone; you must be. You must 
give me a chance then to talk to you.” 

“ What about?” 

“ Can’t you imagine? ” 

She gazed into my eyes without wavering. 
“ I reckon! You’ll give it back and ask me to 
give it back again to you — to destroy! All 
right! That’s a go! I’ll run that chance with 
you! ” 

She held out her hand and I grasped it and 


206 


KEEBAN 


she grasped mine, firmly and well. Somebody 
came through; just an ordinary passenger; but 
of course we dropped hands. When the doors 
were closed again, she went into her bag. 

“ Here’s the key to the suit case,” she offered 
it to me. “ Sorry you won’t find more for you 
to use inside; but there’s a new toothbrush, 
anyway. Please have it! ” 

“ You’ve another? ” We were suddenly par¬ 
ticular about little things with each other. 

“ There’re more in Cleveland,” she replied. 
“Where do you stop in New York? ” 

“ The Belmont.” 

“ I’ll wire you my address.” 

“ Where we’ll meet? ” 

“That’s it. Can you remember this?” she 
asked. “ Don’t put it down. “ Take five from 
the first number, three from the second; one 
from the third. That much for numbers. For 
words read from Webster’s Collegiate Diction¬ 
ary — they’re everywhere — first five up, second 
three down, third one up, and so on. A street 
named after a number will be spelled in sylla¬ 
bles, taking the first in a word. You can find 
any syllable in the dictionary. Now tell me 
that.” 


I ASSIST A GET-AWAY 207 

I told it to her; and still we had an instant 
there alone. 

“ What do you know about happenings after 
the scatter from the Feather?” I said to her. 
“ Did Vine get Christina? ” 

“ No; she got away.” 

“He’s in Chicago?” 

“No; New York.” 

“What else do you know about him?” 

She shook her head and opened the door to¬ 
ward her car. “ Don’t stay about now,” she 
asked me; and she went into her compartment. 

I should have known that she wouldn’t talk 
over others’ affairs. She’d said a good deal, 
all things considered. So Christina had escaped 
Keeban and he was back in New York, whence 
he had come. Probably, therefore, Jerry was 
in New York, too. 

I asked myself what Doris’s move to the east 
might have to do with them; how might she be 
mixed in? 

Likely she was not mixed with them at all 
except when, more or less by chance, her 
group encountered one of their group in busi¬ 
ness. I could not possibly connect her with 
any scheme for murder. Christina, herself, had 
refused such a scheme; how much more surely 


208 KEEBAN 

would Doris have kept free from anything like 
that! 

With her key in my hand, I stood in the ves¬ 
tibule of the next car, daydreaming about her. 
The train was bounding along too beautifully, 
rushing us right into Cleveland. I wanted to 
see Doris again but she’d dismissed me; I could 
only endanger her now by hanging around. 

When we stopped at Cleveland, at eight- 
thirty, old “ Iron Age ” again was on the plat¬ 
form; and this time I tumbled off with him. I 
didn’t plan anything quite so subtle as the suc¬ 
ceeding event; really, I wasn’t up to that at 
all. You see, what happened was this. 

I’d reported to him, on parting from Doris 
after dinner, that I was sure they were leaving 
the train at Cleveland because she’d mentioned 
the matter, quite definitely, again. Of course 
Dibley only regarded me more in sorrow than 
otherwise; he was certain they were only play¬ 
ing me. So when I was on the platform with 
him, for my benefit he was a bit over-ostenta¬ 
tious in acting out his conviction that they were 
staying on the train. He had a new sheaf of 
messages to clutter up the telegraph office and 
Western Union had a boy burdened down with 
replies for him; so Doris and George, with Fe- 


I ASSIST A GET-AWAY 209 

lice, were off and started away almost before 
“ Iron Age ” guessed it. 

They were all without baggage, of course. 
After he saw them, Dibley got into action 
quickly. He yelled for guards to close in; he 
had out his gun. But they were down the 
stairs and I didn’t need to grab that gun; so I 
didn’t. Shots sounded below, however. I 
couldn’t tell who fired them. I went down 
the stairs with Dibley and the rest of the drift 
from the platform; but my three friends had 
doubled, dodged and were away. 

I waited as long as I dared; then I climbed 
and caught the train. Dibley didn’t; but his 
orders overtook us. At Ashtabula, an hour or 
so east, they stopped us and officers came aboard 
to take off all baggage from compartment E, 
car No. 424, and also to capture George’s large, 
piggy portmanteau. A special engine was about 
to start with all that for Cleveland. 

During the stop, I rather expected a word 
or two might be said to me; but it became plain 
that Dibley’s opinion of me continued true to 
form. Nobody bothered me; the train went 
on; my berth was made and I took that new suit 
case of Doris Janvier’s behind the curtains. 


XVI 


I WALK INTO A PARLOR. 

NATURALLY I debated about opening the bag. 
She’d given me the key; she had told me to 
use it, “ please!” to find her new toothbrush. 
But I didn’t open it for that. She had meant, 
I thought, that I should see what I was carry¬ 
ing. So at last I unlocked it and in the light 
of the little berth lamp I came upon her own 
intimate attire — a kimono, slippers and silk 
pajamas, ridiculous little lovely things; stock¬ 
ings, some more gossamer silk which probably 
was what Field’s advertise as an “ envelope ”, 
a mirror, a brush, a manicure set. There was 
the new toothbrush and “ This Freedom”, and 
below the book, tied together, a pair of steel 
plates. After looking so far, I felt no harm in 
gazing further, especially at these. 

One was engraved to print ten-dollar Na¬ 
tional Bank Notes; the other was good — or bad 
— for the denomination of a hundred. I’m no 
judge of engraving on steel but they looked like 
excellent plates to me. 


I WALK INTO A PARLOR 211 

I rewrapped them and brigaded them with 
“ This Freedom ” and shoved them back in the 
suit case, which I locked. I went to use the 
toothbrush and also to think about those plates. 
“Well, wasn’t that what you expected when 
you gave her your word?” I said to myself. 
The answer was that then I hadn’t the plates 
in my hand and I was talking to Doris. 

Going to bed, I lay awake, mulling over all 
manner of doubts having to do with Doris and 
Jerry and Keeban, Christina, and with me. I 
did some practical speculating, too; I wondered 
whether old “ Iron Age ”, when he rendez¬ 
voused Doris’s luggage returned from Ashta¬ 
bula, was going to note the omission of kimono, 
slippers, silk pajamas, envelope, mirror, brush 
and “ This Freedom ” from the normal equip¬ 
ment of a young lady of the day; I wondered 
if, missing them, he might feel strange suspi¬ 
cions of me, which even the memory of my 
cheese quotations would not allay. But evi¬ 
dently he did not. 

I got to sleep; when I awoke, Doris’s suit 
case and those plates remained as they were. 
Nobody had disturbed them or me. 

Breakfasting beside the Hudson, I propped 
before me the New York Times. It was inno- 


212 


KEEBAN 


cent of knowledge of minor doings in the west, 
such as a sudden getaway with shooting near the 
Lake Shore station at Cleveland, but it played 
a special from Chicago on the front page. 

Janvier, the counterfeiter, had been taken 
with two of his new plates. The Times cor¬ 
respondent was feeling decidedly high up be¬ 
cause of it. Trust New York to respond to 
word that the financial structure is just a bit 
more safe. Old Wally Bailey was gloriously 
bucked over the business too; he had himself 
interviewed in two places; first he certified that 
the plates, which had been captured, were the 
source of the highly deceptive and dangerous 
twenty and fifty-dollar false Federal Reserve 
notes recently put in circulation in great quan¬ 
tities; second he sounded the alarm that Jan¬ 
vier had completed, also, a couple of other 
plates, one for printing ten-dollar bills and one 
for striking off notes of one-hundred dollar de¬ 
nomination. The police had evidence that these 
plates existed but they had failed to find them. 

For the best of reasons! I had them tied up 
with “This Freedom” underneath Doris’s lin¬ 
gerie. 

I carried her suit case myself across to the 
Belmont where I took it to my room and then, 


I WALK INTO A PARLOR 213 

after locking myself in, I gathered Janvier’s 
plates from it and carried them, in my pocket, 
up to our bank where I had a safe deposit box 
and I put them away there. Much happier in 
my head, I wired Fannpal and Company, Chi¬ 
cago, not to expect me at the desk that morning 
and dropped into our New York branch and 
pretended that business had brought me on. 

Beans and butter never struck me so dull as 
upon this morning; and the only thrill I could 
squeeze from Philadelphia double daisies and 
Fond du Lac twins was the second-hand mem¬ 
ory of yesterday. I kept ’phoning the Belmont 
inquiring for telegrams; but nothing came in 
for me. 

What was happening in Cleveland? I won¬ 
dered. Was Doris going back to Chicago, now 
that her father was taken; or would she stick 
to her plan to come on? 

Vine — Keeban — was here, she said; Chris¬ 
tina was here. So, if Jerry was anywhere, 
probably he also was here; and, if any of his 
old habits clung to him, he’d know I’d arrived, 
too. There is a column printed every day, you 
know, giving the news of arrivals of out-of-town 
buyers in every line of trade. My name, with 
New York address, was in the papers that after- 


2I 4 KEEBAN 

noon. Jerry used to glance over the arrivals in 
our line. 

I felt lonely as Crusoe that day, particularly 
when dinner time approached. I imagined I’d 
make myself better by drifting over to dine with 
some friends I’d met on Fifth. There was a 
daughter, there, about Doris’s age and size; a 
popular girl, — a deb of a couple of years’ 
standing. Sitting and smoking, I mean, rather. 

I bored the poor dear. I always had, so why 
not now? She never flicked a stir in me. Not 
that she tried; she didn’t. That was it. “ Well, 
old Steve, we’ll struggle through with the meal 
somehow!” Such was the sensation underly¬ 
ing the ennui; so, naturally, she made it mutual 
with me. 

Thank God, she didn’t try to mix salad 
dressing at the table; so I kept my memory 
clear. 

That night, when I returned to the hotel, 
I had a wire filed at Buffalo; three words, no 
signature: “ Seediness yonder thus.” 

You may suppose I had my Webster handy, 
and, counting my words up and down, made out 
“ See you Thursday.” 

That was to-morrow; so I had to figure out, 
during the night, what I was to say. You see, 


I WALK INTO A PARLOR 215 

I had to bring her those plates and give them 
to her; but she had to give me a chance to 
argue her out of using them. 

Lying in bed, many a good way of putting 
my point of view came to me. I got up sev¬ 
eral times and jotted them down; some I just 
talked over with myself. I made rather a night 
of it; never was more earnest over anything in 
my life. I looked to my talk with that girl 
as a sort of turning point in her life, and for 
me, if I could simply make her see matters 
straight. I was crazy over her; you’ve gath¬ 
ered that; and trusted her, too, or would trust 
her with anything but a counterfeit steel plate 
which her father had engraved. I figured I 
could make it so I could trust her with that, 
too. 

About mid-morning, I got another wire; from 
Jersey City this: “ Seven three chess omnivorus 
noose.” 

No signature again; but the system, which 
Doris taught me in that vestibule, gave me 
the place and the time. Up five from seven 
made twelve; down three from three, zero. Up 
five from chess, first syllable “ cher ” down three 

from omnivorous, “on”; up one from noose, 
<< 


noon. 


2l6 


KEEBAN 


The telegram: “ 120 Cheron (Street) Noon.” 

Cheron proved to be one of those streets, 
turned at several angles, down by Brooklyn 
Bridge. 

I rehearsed all my talk, went to the vault and 
withdrew that pair of plates. I decided to make 
this meeting on foot, not in taxi, so I took the 
subway from Grand Central to the Bridge and 
emerged in that intriguing maze which ra¬ 
diates under the ramp of that old roadway 
suspended above East River. 

Cheron Street showed itself on a corner full 
fifteen minutes before noon. It was a sunny bit 
of city that clear, winter day; it was one of 
those houses-and-stores streets with red-brick 
fronts, tall narrow windows and iron stairs and 
railings. Children romped about; hucksters 
were making sales to sets of the wisest buyers 
I ever saw. Price quotations floated to me and 
I wondered how they could work so close to 
cost. 

I was trying to make the time pass more 
swiftly by turning attention to such trifles while 
I waited. For I would not call at No. 120 till 
noon. 

Of course I’d located the number and looked 
it over several times. It was on one of the 


I WALK INTO A PARLOR 217 

regular red brick fronts which owned windows 
cleaner than most of its neighbors. Nice, old- 
fashioned curtains, stiffly starched, showed 
their white patterns. It seemed a precise and 
prim abode, not over-populated. 

During the minutes I watched, men, women 
and children went in and out of the doors 
on each side, — practical looking men, who 
might be mechanics engaged in car repairs 
at a garage around the corner; in ways which 
I’ve mentioned, the women proved they were 
frugal housewives; the play of the children 
added to the decent domesticity of the street. 

There was absolutely nothing sinster in sight 
and nothing and nobody menacing like the 
dyke-keeper in Klangenberg’s delicatessen. 

No one went in or out of Number 120; and 
I imagined it the abode of some aging, female 
relative of Doris; an aunt possibly, who might 
have been her guardian in some country town 
during Doris’s childhood and who now had 
moved to the city and who probably took sup¬ 
port from the proceeds of Janvier’s plates but 
had nothing more to do with them. 

When noon came, and Doris had not ap¬ 
peared, I realized that she must be waiting 
me within; and I went up and rang the bell. 


2l8 


KEEBAN 


An old woman admitted me, a nice-appear- 
ing, wrinkled and gray-haired thing. 

“ Come in,” she said to me immediately, 
before I could ask for anyone. Plainly I had 
been expected; and she motioned me into the 
prim, red-plush parlor with an ancient piano 
and crayon enlargements on the wall; and also 
faded, plush hangings in the door. 

These were particularly important furnish¬ 
ings; for it was when I was stepping between 
them that I was hit on the head; and not by 
that old woman nor by any infirm or failing 
person. The hit was wholly vigorous and ex¬ 
pert; and right at the base of the back of my 
head. 

Of course, I realized all this afterwards; at 
the time, I knew nothing. I was walking into 
that prim, red-plush parlor quite strong and 
happy; I passed the portieres and instanta¬ 
neously I was “ out.” I was also down but 
didn’t know it; I went “out” while still on 
my feet; but naturally, when I found myself 
again, I was on the floor. 


XVII 


CHIEFLY DEVOTED TO A GAS CALLED KX. 

A GOOD many persons of both sexes have put 
into writing the mental confusion usually con¬ 
comitant to the process of “ coming to.” The 
descriptions which I’ve happened to read were 
done by good writers, certainly; but the writers 
don’t impress me now as people who’d been per¬ 
sonally hit on the head. At least, they lacked 
treatment under the hand of a pluperfect, post¬ 
graduate performer upon the medulla oblon¬ 
gata . 

The trouble with those descriptions is that 
they are too advanced and intricate. The sub¬ 
ject generally is seized with some figurative 
image, which is quite all right from my experi¬ 
ence ; but whereas others seem to have come to 
consciousness through flights of fancy similar to 
stanzas in “ Spoon River Anthology ” or Carl 
Sandberg’s best, I woke up repeating to myself 
the simplest of verse. In fact: 


220 


KEEBAN 


“ Will you walk into my parlor? 

Said the spider to the fly; 

It’s the prettiest little parlor, 

That ever you did spy.” 

The psycho-analyst says that the subconscious, 
which is always with us, working, never is actu¬ 
ally foolish; it is interpretive, if you have the 
insight to understand it. Well, this was my sub¬ 
conscious expression. It was interpretive, true 
enough. 

Now the spider, in my complex, was not that 
old woman; Doris was doing the spider in my 
dream. 

Upon becoming aware that, though I lay on 
the edge of a red-plush parlor, I was not physi¬ 
cally a fly, I felt over myself to find what was 
missing. 

There should be something hard and heavy 
and extremely important under my coat in my 
right inside pocket. That region was soft and 
pliable now. Plates were lacking; that was it, 
— nice, new, counterfeit plates which I’d pro¬ 
cured from under Doris Janvier’s lingerie in that 
Pullman on the Century and which I’d put in 
my pocket to return to her here at Number 120 
Cheron Street with an idea of evangelizing her 
out of using them. 


A GAS CALLED KX 


221 


Phrases and periods from that talk I’d pre¬ 
pared for her came into my mind and mixed into 
the parade of other ideas which followed the 
spider-and-fly act. They gave me a laugh, any¬ 
way. 

I lay, looked and listened. After a few min¬ 
utes, I sat up. Apparently I had the house to 
myself. Also I had my watch and other per¬ 
sonal possessions, everything except those plates. 

I took a chance on rising; and still nobody 
disturbed me. Possibly I might have poked all 
over that house but I felt no overmastering im¬ 
pulse. The door and that street, on the other 
side of the pane with these nice, prim, old-fash¬ 
ioned curtains, looked very good to me. I got 
out and shut the door behind me. Over by the 
bridge I found a patrolman and asked him to 
take me to the nearest police station. 

That was the place where I sketched to inter¬ 
ested ears the essentials of what I’d done since 
leaving Chicago. I gave them all, — how I’d 
suspected her before she took the train, how I 
helped her get away at Cleveland; how I’d car¬ 
ried on the plates and went to return them, trust¬ 
ing to the patent leather platitudes I’d prepared 
to turn her to the paths of rectitude. 

I gave them, with that last particularly, the 


222 


KEEBAN 


laugh of their lives. They wanted to know if I 
actually expected she would meet me alone in a 
parlor to talk ethics with me. 

They might have at least arrested me; but 
they didn’t even do that. They did detail an 
officer to accompany me; but he felt himself dis¬ 
tinctly as one charged to keep me from further 
harm. They rushed a squad over to Number 
120 Cheron Street, of course, and surrounded 
the house properly before closing in. But no¬ 
body, not even the old woman, was there. The 
house was empty and so eminently proper to all 
appearances that, for a while, a theory prevailed 
that I had invented my whole story. 

Then they began hearing from Dibley and 
confirmed the first part; about two days later, 
there was plenty of proof of the rest. The prints 
from those missing Janvier plates began mak¬ 
ing their debut at the banks all over New York; 
Philadelphia reported a few; soon Boston was 
heard from. 

They were so good that some of the experts at 
the banks wired Washington for a check on 
serial numbers before throwing Janvier’s work 
out. Naturally, all this made me popular. 

I didn’t care about returning home; I didn’t 
drop into our New York office. I stayed in my 


A GAS CALLED KX 


223 

room, mostly, where old “ Iron Age ” Dibley, 
among others, visited me. 

He informed me that Doris and George and 
Felice all completed their get-away at Cleve¬ 
land; and he didn’t feel himself in the least to 
blame for that. No; he’d shifted any chagrin, 
which he might have felt, right on to me. Doris 
undoubtedly had come on afterwards, counting 
upon my chronic fatuity to respond to feeding 
by her telegrams; undoubtedly — to Dibley’s 
mind—-she personally arranged the medulla 
oblongata performance for me. 

Of course, I’d felt that; but when old “ Iron 
Age ” got gloating over it, he cheered me into a 
question or two. Had she? Was I sure? 

Well, I’d certainly indicated to the police that 
I was; and no one developed any further ideas 
upon the subject. Number 120 Cheron Street 
was deserted of Doris and her crowd as the 
Flamingo Feather after the ball. The issue of 
those new Janvier tens and hundreds seemed to 
shift to the south; Atlanta reported rather more 
than its share; Nashville and Memphis broke 
into the column of complaints and New Orleans 
was not overlooked. 

I was about convinced that my friends of the 
Flamingo and Cheron Street had shifted base 


KEEBAN 


224 

again when I received, through the mails at the 
hotel, a note in Jerry’s handwriting. 

“ Steve: Here’s your chance,” I read. “ Get 
to T. M. Teverson at once and talk to him; or 
Sencort. Prevent any meeting in Sencort Direc¬ 
tors’ room. Make this absolutely sure. Exam¬ 
ine pipe, particularly. J.” 

Jerry’s writing and his manner with me, be¬ 
yond doubt. He was still alive then and, if that 
postmark meant anything, he was in New York 
City at ten o’clock last night. 

Of course, I’d never seen Keeban’s writing. 
It might be identical with Jerry’s; Keeban 
might try this with me for some scheme of his 
own. But I didn’t think it. In the first place, 
this started with such an understanding of me. 

“ Steve: Here’s your chance! ” 

Now Jerry, alive and looking on at me from 
somewhere in New York, naturally would start 
with that thought for me. He’d be feeling, 
from the first moment I’d stuck with him after 
he was accused and when I continued to stick 
through that affair of the Scofields’, how I’d had 
a steady run of results against me. He’d have 
heard how, out of that Flamingo Feather ball, 
I’d gone deeper into disrepute; and he’d been 
thinking just that for me: “ Here’s your chance, 


A GAS CALLED KX 225 

Steve.” He meant, of course, my chance to 
rehabilitate my reputation somewhat. 

“Get to T. M. Teverson at once!” That 
meant to get to the big man of the moment in 
New York. Officially, he was first vice-presi¬ 
dent of the Sencort Trust; but unofficially he 
was a sort of financial vice-regent of Europe for 
the time being. You see, that was the instant of 
the particular crisis in international affairs when 
the Sencort Trust took the load, and “ carried ” 
two of the major powers, along with seven or 
eight of the minors, for the sake of the peace of 
the world and to postpone, for a while anyway, 
the rush of the Fourth Horseman of the Apoca¬ 
lypse over the rest of Europe. 

Teverson personally was packing tremendous 
responsibilities; and naturally every one, whose 
impulse in difficulty is to slip out from under 
and loot and destroy, was keen to take a pot shot 
at him. 

Jerry’s note must mean that he’d run on the 
trail of an especially capable plot which in¬ 
volved the employment of pipes running into the 
directors’ room at the Sencort Trust. Sugges¬ 
tive, that mention of pipes; and he had empha¬ 
sized the need to see Teverson at once. 

I had the note just after breakfast; and the 


226 


KEEBAN 


Times this morning told that Lord Strathon, for 
England, and F. L. Geroud, for France, were 
arriving on the Majestic for immediate confer¬ 
ence with the Sencort committee about loans and 
reparations. That meeting, this morning, un¬ 
doubtedly was booked for the directors’ room at 
the Sencort Trust, — a big bag, sure enough, for 
whoever was going gunning through the pipes 
this morning. 

I’d no time to lose, so I rushed to Wall Street 
and up in the old Trust Building to Teverson’s 
office. He was down meeting the Majestic, 
which was just docking; so I sent in my card to 
Sencort. 

Now I knew the old man slightly; he had, 
among a thousand other flyers, his venture in 
beans, netting himself something too. Also, 
Fanneal and Company had supplied on some 
foreign-food contracts he’d financed; so I was 
sure he’d know my name. 

He did; he sent out word he couldn’t see me 
and told the girl to explain that he was expect¬ 
ing Lord Strathon and M. Geroud momen¬ 
tarily. 

“ Tell him that’s why I have to see him now,” 
I urged the girl. 

She brought out word that the Sencort Trust 


A GAS CALLED KX 


227 

would not let the contracts on the supplies to be 
bought with proceeds of the new loans; and, if 
they did, I’d have to see him later. 

I said to that girl, “ You read the papers? ” 

Of course she did; and, when I asked, she 
granted that she’d seen considerable mention of 
me, recently. 

“ That’s good,” I said. “ Will you ask Mr. 
Sencort if he has, too? And, if he has, assure 
him I’ve called on nothing connected with my 
usual business, but something else of direct im¬ 
portance to him.” 

“ Rising out of your — ” she hesitated and 
then said — “ your counterfeiter’s connection, 
Mr. Fanneal? ” 

“ Rising from it,” I told her, “ but not stop¬ 
ping there. Now I leave it to you to get me in 
to see Mr. Sencort.” 

I saw, by this time, she was curious, if not a 
little impressed. It’s queer how a short and con¬ 
spicuously unsuccessful connection with crime 
produces an effect which a lifetime in a credit¬ 
able business can not do, — at least not the bean 
business. That girl disappeared and when she 
was back again, it was to gsk me into Mr. Sen- 
cort’s office. 

The old man was at his desk and alone, and I 


228 


KEEBAN 


saw at once that the girl had gone the distance 
for me with him; I had much to make good, so 
I went to it immediately. 

“ I’ve come to ask you not to have any meet¬ 
ings in your directors’ room to-day.” 

Of course he asked why; and I told him, 
“ I’ve word, which I feel sure is reliable, that 
there is a plot against your meeting.” 

(( Hmm!” said Sencort, evidently disap¬ 
pointed. “ Much obliged for your trouble.” 

Plainly, he wasn’t interested. 

I said,“You’ll not meet in that room this 
morning? ” 

He was looking at papers on his desk. “ Why 
not? I’ve had it examined. I’ve been warned 
before, Fanneal; so we’ve already taken precau¬ 
tions. These threats never amount to anything. 
Much obliged to you, however.” 

“ You’ve examined the pipes in that room?” 
I asked. 

“ Pipes? ” he repeated. There’s always some¬ 
thing about definiteness which claims the atten¬ 
tion. He pressed a button on his desk. 

The girl, who had got me in, reappeared. 
“ Ask Reed and Weston whether they’ve par¬ 
ticularly examined the pipes in the directors’ 


A GAS CALLED KX 229 

room,” he said; and when the girl was gone, he 
nodded to me. “ Sit down, Fanneal.” 

Some one rang him on the ’phone, just then; 
and when he was through talking, the girl 
gave word: “ Not particularly, Mr. Sencort. 
They’re going over them now.” 

Again she left us alone. 

“ Rather rotten situation in Europe,” I com¬ 
mented conversationally. 

“ Hmm,” Sencort grunted, chewing his cigar, 
with as little interest in my reactions on the 
European trouble as in my warning to him. He 
gave me the impression that, having read about 
my performance with those counterfeit plates, 
he was willing to refresh his memory upon the 
sort of citizen who did that sort of thing. 

His girl reentered and reported, “ Mr. Tever- 
son is here with Lord Strathon and M. Geroud, 
sir.” 

Sencort nodded. “ Heard from Reed? ” 

“ He’s outside, sir.” 

“ Send him in.” 

Reed proved to be a tall, keen-looking chap, 
evidently alert and undoubtedly dependable. 
He was one of the bank detectives, not in uni¬ 
form. 

“ We’ve gone over the whole room again, sir; 


KEEBAN 


230 

and also the rooms adjoining. Everything is in 
order,” he reported. 

“ Particularly the pipes?” Sencort asked. 

“ There’s nothing wrong with the pipes, sir.” 

“ Very well,” Sencort dismissed him; and 
then he looked at me. “ Much obliged, Fan- 
neal,” he thanked me again. 

Of course, he was dismissing me, but I held 
my ground. “ The warning which reached me, 
Mr. Sencort, did not advise mere examination of 
the room,” I insisted. “ It said to prevent its 
use. I must urge you, whatever you think, not to 
meet in that room.” 

“ Fanneal, if I governed my movements ac¬ 
cording to cautions of well-meaning friends, I’d 
have put myself and family and friends in a 
steel safe thirty years ago. Reed says that room 
is clear; it is on the fifth floor, so attack from 
the street is impossible. Here’s Teverson now.” 

Another hint for me, but I stuck, and just then 
Teverson came in to see what was so absorbing 
in here, and old Sencort, in explaining why he 
was preferring a chat with me to a conference 
with M. Geroud and Lord Strathon at that hour, 
of course dragged in the mad idea I’d brought 
along. But Teverson wasn’t amused by it at all. 

“ Reed and Weston have both examined the 


A GAS CALLED KX 


231 

room,” Sencort repeated, “ and found all in 
order.” 

“ All was in order over at Ed Costrelman’s 
the other night, not only before but after the — 
the occurrence,” Teverson mentioned in a 
thoughtful sort of brooding manner which 
sparked up old Sencort. 

“What occurrence?” he came back loudly; 
of course Teverson had the door shut after him. 

“ Good Lord,” said Teverson, “ didn’t you 
know that Ed Costrelman’s dead? ” 

“ Certainly,” said Sencort. “ I also know that 
his butler is dead and most of his party was sick 
but have recovered; from something wrong in 
the wine or vermuth. What has that to do with 
us? We’re not serving liqueur at directors’ 
meeting.” 

“ It wasn’t in the wine or vermuth,” Teverson 
came back calmly. “ It wasn’t in the food 
either; everything they’d drunk or tasted has 
been analyzed. Everything, I tell you, was in 
order.” 

“What was it, then?” Sencort went at him, 
still with more impatience than interest. “ Si¬ 
multaneous, group indigestion? ” 

“ A poison, a definite, lethal agent, reached 
Costrelman and the butler — Swan — in fatal 


KEEBAN 


232 

amount and the rest in less quantity. The post¬ 
mortem on Ed and Swan was completed this 
morning; there was definite, characteristic de¬ 
struction of motor nerve centers.” 

“ Characteristic of what? ” This was old 
Sencort — yielding, pliable nature, he had, you 
see — at Teverson again. 

“ A cheerful little chemical composition 
which the infernal-machine and poison squad of 
the secret service call KX.” 

“ What? ” 

“ In your school days, how did you designate 
algebraically an unknown quantity?” Teverson 
asked old Sencort, evidently knowing that the 
way to handle the old boy was by going to the 
good old Socratic. 

“ By the later letters of the alphabet,” Sencort 
grunted. 

“ That is the X in the name of this; it means 
they haven’t an iota of information on one ingre¬ 
dient, except by its effect; by K, they mean they 
can halfway guess at the other; it seems to be 
the masterpiece of an Austrian chemist known as 
Stenewisc who hides himself most successfully 
somewhere on the East Side here. If he’d been 
born in the Borgias’ time, he’d have been Lucre- 
tia’s favorite; for his stuff killed Costrelrnan 


A GAS CALLED KX 233 

and Swan and almost killed half a dozen more 
without giving the slightest warning till the 
physical seizure came, and without leaving an 
external trace.” 

“ Poison to kill has to get into one,” Sencort 
came back, not giving up yet. “ If it wasn’t in 
the food or in the drink, where was it? ” 

“What,” returned Teverson, sticking to the 
Socratic, “ goes into one’s body beside food and 
drink?” 

“ Air’s all I can think of.” 

“ All I can,” Teverson admitted. “ And, 
with that in mind, I believe I’ll have a look 
around our directors’ room myself, if you’ll hold, 
up our meeting for a few minutes.” 

“ Damn foolishness,” acceded Sencort gra¬ 
ciously. 

“ Pipes were what I was particularly warned 
against,” I said to Teverson. 

“ Come along,” he invited me; so I went with 
him to the fifth floor, passed Weston and Reed 
on guard outside to see that nobody carted in 
time bombs since they’d last reported the room 
clear, and we stepped into the regular, long- 
tabled, black-walnut panelled mausoleum sort 
of room which directors picked for their delib¬ 
erations a generation or so ago. 


KEEBAN 


234 

There it was, with two windows to the street 
and both closed; it was winter, you see, and 
Sencort wasn’t the only near octogenarian to 
rally round that walnut. It had electric lights 
and nothing else but a steam radiator, carpet 
and chairs and five old etchings on the walls. 
Everything was clear; nothing was wrong in the 
drawers or under the tables or chairs or even 
under the carpet. Reed had carefully tested 
the radiators and steam pipes. They were abso¬ 
lutely in order. 

But I kept poking about the room and, behind 
an etching, I found the capped head of an old 
gas pipe which evidently brought illuminating 
gas to the room in the days before electric 
lighting. 

It was capped, I say, and looked quite all 
right, but I happened to put my fingers behind 
the cap. Then I called Teverson; and he felt, 
and called Reed. 

“ What do you think of that? ” he asked. 

That was a slot—rather a series of slots — 
cut through the pipe behind the cap on the right 
wall. You couldn’t see them from the front; 
you hardly could see them when you pressed 
cheek to the wall but you could feel them top, 
bottom and sides of the pipe cut through, leav- 


A GAS CALLED KX 


235 

ing just enough metal to hold the cap in place; 
and freshly cut; for the edges were sharp to 
your fingers and shining to your eyes. But of 
course every scrap and shaving of the metal had 
been cleaned away. The pipe behind the cap 
back of an etching on the opposite wall was 
exactly like this. 

“ It was to come that way, I guess,” I said 
carefully to Teverson. 

“Was?” he repeated as carefully. “What 
makes you think it isn’t yet to come? Not in the 
middle of our meeting now, but to whoever is 
here, which means you and me.” But he did 
not move away; instead, he walked to the win¬ 
dow and stood there looking down. I glanced 
down too and into Wall Street and got a glimpse 
of that part which seemed particularly to bear a 
message for us this morning — that strip be¬ 
tween Morgan’s offices and the sub-treasury 
where people were peacefully passing and feel¬ 
ing absolutely secure that summer noon, not so 
long ago, when without warning at all that in¬ 
fernal no-one-yet-knows-what went off and did 
what nobody about Wall Street will ever forget. 

Of course, what had strewed the street had 
been gathered up and the pavement repaired 
and flushed and swept and the buildings restored 


KEEBAN 


236 

long ago; yet this neighborhood wasn’t pre¬ 
cisely the best spot to disregard a threat of ter¬ 
rorism, — especially when you’ve found ances¬ 
tral gas pipes freshly chiselled for no use you 
wish to put them to. 

“ We’ve expected trouble from radicals about 
this stage in our foreign financing, Fanneal,” 
Teverson said to me. “ We’ve guarded Geroud 
and Strathon from the minute they passed quar¬ 
antine; we’ve double-guarded these premises 
with special men who are watching every 
stranger who comes in to-day; we’ve taken 
every precaution — or thought we had. That’s 
why Sencort was so sure nothing could happen.” 

He stepped nearer to the window and I real¬ 
ized that he was not standing there merely to 
think, but he was intentionally showing himself 
to convince any watcher that the room was occu¬ 
pied. He turned about and went on, “ No one 
knows where the other ends of these pipes are 
now; of course they haven’t been used for 
decades. They might stop anywhere or they 
might have been led on indefinitely. If what 
killed Costrelman came through the air — and 
it seems certain it did — and if those pipes are 
conveyors for more of it, they could have 
pumped it in and nobody suspected till some- 


A GAS CALLED KX 


237 

body fell over; it might be coming now on us. 
Do you feel any movement of air from that 
pipe? ” 

“ I can’t be sure,” I said. 

“ Come out now,” said Teverson, pulling at 
me absolutely unnecessarily; he didn’t have to 
put up any argument. “ I may be a damn fool, 
as Sencort suggests, but then I’ve rather a longer 
life expectancy — away from slotted gas pipes — 
than he. Besides, I’m beginning to feel some of 
this is personal against me. I was invited to 
Costrelman’s dinner and was expected, though 
I didn’t get there. . . . Weston, get help at once 
and try to cover the places where these pipes 
may run to; they may be entirely outside the 
building, of course. Jump! Reed, post men 
here to see no one uses this room or room next 
to it to-day. Leave the electric lights burning 
as if the room was being used and send some 
one, on the run, to that animal store the other 
side of Broadway in a cellar, Thames Street, I 
think, and buy four or five guinea pigs; if he 
gets back with them in fifteen minutes, cover 
your head, hold your breath, and put them in¬ 
side this door; close it. If he doesn’t get back 
that soon, don’t even go near the door. Wait 


KEEBAN 


238 

here, Fanneal.” He left me in an office near by 
and himself rushed away. 

“ Now you tell me,” he went at me three min¬ 
utes later, “ how much you know about this? ” 


XVIII 


DORIS APPEARS AND VANISHES. 

I WAS a changed man, as you may imagine. 
Yesterday and up to this minute of this morning, 
I was the laugh of the locality. “ F. P. A.” had 
put in a little paragraph about me; the librett¬ 
ists of the running revues also had tamped in a 
line or two of appropriate personal reference to 
the Chicago vendor of beans, with two nice, new 
money plates packed in his jeans. 

It was music to me to hear any one address me 
as Teverson was doing. 

“ You know nearly all that I do,” I told him. 
“ Maybe you’ve heard I’ve been in a little mix- 
up with counterfeiters and others recently. I 
got my tip out of that.” 

“ Who sent the tip? ” 

I shook my head; it was hopeless to go into 
the question of Jerry with him; and Teverson 
was not inclined to waste time impractically. 

“ Pipes! ” he repeated. “ They were going to 
use the pipes; that’s all you knew of their 
method? ” 


240 


KEEBAN 


“ That’s all.” 

“ What do you want to do now? ” he asked me, 
almost deferentially. “ Stay here? ” 

“ I’d like to see this through, of course,” I 
said. “ I’d like to know what happens to those 
guinea pigs.” 

“ Whatever you like,” he answered, and shook 
hands with me. I could see he was getting un¬ 
easy about Strathon and Geroud. He went out 
and I, having nothing to do but wait, wandered 
in the hall. 

A door opened at the rear and showed an 
enclosed stairway lit by yellow electricity; a 
girl had come up the stairs and now was stand¬ 
ing in the dimness of the hall. 

During the second she showed herself in the 
lighted doorway, before the door closed again, 
I had a glimpse of her outline. She was little 
and trim; like Doris, I thought. 

I stepped down by her and she went to the 
side of the hall and stood. Then I had the in¬ 
stinct to seize her; and there, in the quarter- 
light, I saw what I was feeling with my hands. 
She was Doris Janvier. 

With the realization, my head seemed to hurt 
where I’d been hit; but my fingers held firm to 
her, giving her no chance to get away. 


DORIS APPEARS AND VANISHES 241 

“ What are you doing here? ” I challenged. 

She was quick! “ I came up to see Mr. Tev- 
erson! ” she said to me. “ They wouldn’t let me 
see him downstairs. I heard he was up here! ” 

I half shook her. “You came up to see if 
they were meeting in the directors’ room. 
You’re the “ wire ” inside to-day! You came to 
see if everybody was placed! Well, nobody’ll 
be in that room but guinea pigs this morning. I 
don’t mind telling you, for you’ll not get back to 
tell them.” 

“Oh!” she said. That was all, just then. 
“ Oh!” 

I kept hold of her, not knowing what else to 
do or say. 

“ Where are they? ” I asked her, after a half¬ 
minute. 

“ Who?” 

“ Your crowd.” 

She waited half a minute herself and then 
said, “ I don’t know.” 

“Never mind; we’ll find them. We’re fol¬ 
lowing your pipes,” I assured her. I dragged 
her toward the front of the hall and had a better 
look at her. 

“ They’re not my pipes! ” she denied. 

“ That’s true,” I admitted. “ You found them 


KEEBAN 


242 

in place; all you had to do was to make new 
openings.” 

“ Steve! ” she said to me. 

“ Don’t try it,” I asked her. 

I could see her face now, — her lips straight 
and thin, her eyes fixed on me, her forehead 
damp with those tiny drops of perspiration 
which you know are cold. She was wearing, not 
the same suit she’d had on the train; but one as 
smart, with fur collar and cuffs. She was the 
same neat little thing who had so completely 
fooled me; but she wouldn’t again. 

“ Steve! ” she repeated my name. “ I came 
here to find Mr. Teverson to warn him. Since 
he’s been warned, I don’t care.” 

“I do!” I retorted and held her. She’d 
spoken as if I’d let her walk away. 

Reed was back at the door of the directors’ 
room with little furry things in his hands. 
Somebody opened the door, he entered and came 
out quickly without the guinea pigs. He saw 
me and stepped up. 

“ Who’s this, Mr. Fanneal? ” he asked me, 
respectfully enough, gazing at Doris. 

I didn’t reply and he answered himself. “ Oh, 
it’s her who was asking for Mr. Teverson down¬ 
stairs.” 


DORIS APPEARS AND VANISHES 243 

“ I’ll see to her,” I said to Reed, and I led 
her into a room which I found empty. 

“ Now you’d better tell me all you know,” I 
advised her. 

“ What’ll you do, if I don’t? ” 

“ You’ll not get out of this! ” I promised her. 
“ Not out of this! ” 

Nothing yet had really happened in “ this 
we’d discovered nothing actual but those slotted 
pipes. Not even the guinea pigs had been killed 
yet; but the certainty of the plot, which had 
convinced Teverson too, turned me sick when I 
thought of it. And this girl, whom I held, was 
in the scheme. 

True, she had stopped, on a lower floor, to 
inquire for Teverson; but that proved nothing 
in her favor. I thought how I’d trusted her 
before and how I’d been hit on the back of the 
head when I went to that meeting place where I 
was to have my chance to argue with her, alone. 

I held to her; and she gazed at me and I felt 
her breathing slowly and deeply. The little 
clock on the desk near us turned to eleven; and 
we both heard steps and talk in the hall. 

“ What are they doing? ” she asked me. 

I opened our door; and we both saw two men, 
whose figures looked like Weston and Reed. 


KEEBAN 


244 

They had hooded affairs, of gas-mask pattern 
over their heads, and they were at the door of 
the directors’ room. 

“ Don’t go in!” Doris cried to them. “No 
mask’s any good! Don’t let them in! ” she cried 
to me. 

Apparently they did not hear and Doris 
jerked toward them. I held her and shoved her 
back of me. “Don’t go in, Reed!” I called 
and at that moment, though I did not know it, 
I must have let Doris go. 

I was watching the men and calling to them 
again; they had the door open a little; now 
they dropped back, but they could look in. 

“ They’re dead,” said Reed’s voice. 

“ Sure,” said the other. Then I missed 
Doris; and when I saw her, she was at the top 
of the stairs where she had first appeared. She 
had the door open and she was standing in it, 
looking back; then she slammed it. I was after 
her, but she had too good a lead. On the third 
floor, she entered the Sencort offices and left me 
on the back stairs with a bolted door between us. 

I beat upon it and shouted and then realized, 
too late, that my best chance was to go to the 
ground and head her off. Of course I never 
headed her; she was gone. 


DORIS APPEARS AND VANISHES 245 

When I returned upstairs, Reed had venti¬ 
lated the directors’ room by opening the win¬ 
dows from the outside ledge. He had taken out 
the four guinea pigs he had left penned on the 
top of the directors’ table. They were all dead 
without visible hurt or reason. 

Teverson came out of his conference, which 
was being held on the third floor; and he turned 
the limp guinea pigs over thoughtfully. 

“ There’s only one reason those aren’t Strathon 
and Geroud and Sencort and me, Fanneal,” he 
said, looking at me. “ You want to do one more 
big thing for us and against — them?” He 
moved his head toward the wall; I knew whom 
he meant. 

“ What’s that?” I asked. 

“ Keep this all quiet. It’s asking something, 
I know.” 

I guess I got red at that. He meant I’d 
played rather prominently as a goat and it was 
something to ask me to conceal the one thing I’d 
put through. 

“ It’s the only thing to do,” I agreed. 

He gave me his hand again. “ We’ll all 
know,” he said. 

“ How about the men you have tracing the 
pipes? ” I asked. 


246 


KEEBAN 


“ Nothing from them yet.” 

And there was nothing until a good deal later, 
when they found that those old gas pipes had 
been extended into an unused basement room in 
the building to the left. When they entered this 
room, they found proof that recently it had been 
occupied; men had been doing things there 
with reference to the end of that extended gas 
pipe, but everybody had got away. 

I kept quiet, of course; the Sencort people 
hushed their clerks. Lord Strathon, for Eng¬ 
land, and M. Geroud, for France, met with 
Sencort and Teverson and made their agree¬ 
ments as everybody read. Nobody read of that 
near success at gassing them dead as those guinea 
pigs which had been penned on their table. 

Nobody knew, but the Sencort people and I 
and those who had slotted the pipes and killed 
the four guinea pigs from that next-door base¬ 
ment room. 

“ Get out of New York, Steve! Stay away! ” 
said another note to me in Jerry’s handwriting. 

It arrived the second day after the gassing of 
the guinea pigs and I was thinking it over, when 
walking on Park Avenue and, being far from 
my hotel, I gave in to a taxi driver who offered 
his cab at the curb. 


DORIS APPEARS AND VANISHES 247 

‘ Belmont! ” I told him; and he started in 
the right direction; then he swung to the east 
and was over Third Avenue. He was up an 
alley while I was rapping at his window. 

I realized then and opened the door and 
jumped out while the cab was still moving; but 
I was near his destination. A gat was at my 
midriff before I’d stopped slipping in the muck 
underfoot; and as I looked into the faces of the 
gents surrounding me, I understood that, upon 
the rack of their club, my number to-day had 
arrived at the top. 


XIX 


I HEAR OF THE GLASS ROOM. 

They were not masked; it was daylight. The 
hour was late in the afternoon, to be sure; but 
I saw them plainly as they made no attempt at 
concealment. And I could guess at the signifi¬ 
cance of this. They showed themselves, without 
care, for they felt absolutely sure I would never 
have a chance to give evidence against them. 

I used to wonder why a man doesn’t put up a 
fight, in spite of having a gun shoved against 
him, when he knows he’s in for the worst possi¬ 
ble after he surrenders to such a circle as met 
me. The fact is, at the moment, the gun at your 
belt is wholly convincing; you aren’t competent 
to imagine incidents subsequent to the occasion 
of its going off. So you don’t force the occasion. 

“ Step in there,” somebody said to me; and I 
stepped. “ There ” was a door in the rear of a 
building; it led into an empty room and to 
another door indicated as my destination. 

Here was a closet without further portal and 


I HEAR OF THE GLASS ROOM 249 

without window; its light came through the 
door by which I entered; and it was so dark 
that, when I was thrust in and the door slammed 
and bolted, I supposed myself alone. 

I stood still, with my hand on the door panel, 
while the after-images of light faded from my 
retinas and became replaced by the blackness of 
pitch dark. I indulged myself — or attempted 
to — in some of that logic said by Jerry, a little 
time ago, to be the present prerogative of ger- 
vers, guns and gorillas, and in which I felt cer¬ 
tain that pumpers of poison gas would not be 
found lacking. 

The last step on their ladder of reason was 
not difficult for my mind to ascend. I had 
spoiled their great scheme at the Sencort Trust; 
therefore now I was to be punished. Perhaps, 
in contemplation of the certainty of this, I 
should have been satisfied; but I had to go about 
the gathering up of earlier starts and sequences. 

I felt myself caught in a continuity, fre¬ 
quently suggested but not finally convincing, 
until suddenly that gat at my stomach summed 
up everything for me. “ Here you are!” it 
spoke. “ You’ve gone this way and that; but 
now you’ve come to it! ” 

I got to thinking what Jerry told me of “ his 


KEEBAN 


250 

friend ” — Keeban, his strange, sinister twin — 
“ sitting in with destiny ” by knowing, in ad¬ 
vance, what he was going to do to others. I’d 
thought of him sitting in with destiny on Doro¬ 
thy Crewe and old Win Scofield and on Jerry 
himself; but I hadn’t thought of him sitting in 
with destiny on me. Stupid, now that I came to 
see it; for of course I was in his calculations all 
along; he’d used me, as long as I proved profit¬ 
able and now that I’d failed him, he’d finish me. 

For I knew than that Keeban had me. He 
had not shown himself in that circle of reception 
in the alley. No; every face there had been un¬ 
known to me, unless one was the dyke-keeper of 
Klangenberg’s delicatessen. They were normal¬ 
appearing, good-looking youths who made the 
majority in that circle. 

I’d often noticed — haven’t you — how indis¬ 
tinguishable our felons are from the philanthro¬ 
pists of the day. Mix up the captions — as the 
best of newspapers sometimes do — accompany¬ 
ing the illustrated page pictures of the gentry 
who last night did “ Fanny’s First Play ” for the 
Presbyterian Home and the guests and ladies 
who last night failed to start their Fiat promptly 
after they had it all filled from the ring and 
wrist-watch trays in Caldon’s windows, and 


I HEAR OF THE GLASS ROOM 251 

who could be sure which words went with which 
faces? 

Admit the truth; you’d hire most murderers 
on sight. Others do; why not you? They look 
normal. 

Nero was normal, H. G. Wells says; he had 
a little peculiarity, to be sure, but that was 
merely incidental to his position, not to his 
nature. He was so placed, you see, that the 
ideas, which remain mere passing black thoughts 
and impulses with the rest of us, could without 
any trouble or personal effort at all become 
actual deeds with him. That was the secret of 
Nero. Before a man condemns Nero as being 
of a separate species from himself, he should 
examine very carefully his own secret thoughts. 
This is Wells’s own advice and monition. 

It occurred to me there in the dark in refer¬ 
ence to the normals on the other side of the door. 
They looked all right; but they showed signs of 
an education decidedly deficient on inhibitions, 
and altogether too prodigal at translating dark 
thoughts and impulses into action. 

I wondered about Jerry and how much he 
might be knowing of my present position; 
twice, recently, you remember, I’d had word 
from him. I did the drowning-man acts,— 


KEEBAN 


252 

both of them; I caught at the straw that some¬ 
how he might save me, and I reviewed, if not 
my entire life, yet several significant epochs of 
it; and I got to thinking about Doris. 

She was in with the worst, I was now sure; 
she not only had had me hit on the head, when I 
came to see her, but she’d worked in that scheme 
to gas Sencort and his guests. I kept thinking 
about her and the dances we’d had together at 
the Flamingo Feather and our dinner on the 
train when I’d had the best time ever in my life. 

Meanwhile I was listening and I began to 
realize that there was a soft, regular sound sepa¬ 
rate from and nearer than those which reached 
me through the door. It was the zephyr of 
breath. Some one was in the closet with me. 

“ Hello,” I whispered. “ Who’s here? ” 

A hand touched my side and I seized it, — a 
small, firm hand mighty like Doris’s. 

“ Hello; who’re you? ” I asked. 

“ Hello, Steve,” she said. Doris! By Chris¬ 
topher, Doris! 

“Anybody else in here?” I asked. That 
sounds stupider now than at the time; for after 
this, I was ready for anything. 

“ No,” she said. 


I HEAR OF THE GLASS ROOM 253 

“What ’re you doing here?” I asked her; 
and she said, “ What d’ you suppose? ” 

That was it; what did I suppose? Here she 
was with me. I was there because I’d run down 
and showed Teverson those slotted pipes and 
spoiled the best of Keeban’s schemes. Now why 
should she be here except for the same reason? 

“ They saw you down on Wall Street,” I said. 

“ Yes.” 

“ I see,” I whispered. 

“ Do you? ” she asked me. 

I bent at the same time that my hands, which 
had been holding hers, felt up her arms, over 
her shoulders and located her cheeks. I held her 
between my hands and, bending, kissed her. On 
the lips, it was; I found them fair. She helped, 
perhaps, a little. 

“ How long you been here,” I asked her, my 
lips burning like flame; and how I liked it! 

“ What time is it? ” she asked. 

“ ’Bout five when they shoved me in.” 

“ I came at three.” 

I kissed her again at that; I was still bending 
and had her cheeks between my hands. 

“ How’d they get you? You take a cab? ” 

“ That’s how they got you? ” 


254 


KEEBAN 


“ Me,” I said. “ But you — you weren’t so 
easy, were you? ” 

“ Oh, I don’t know,” she temporized. 

Queer — wasn’t that — how she wanted to 
show consideration for me? “ I should have 
told you,” she blamed herself, “ that they’d be 
watching the Sencort building, and when they 
bumped off just guinea pigs, they’d lay for who 
fooled ’em.” 

“ I had a tip to skip out,” I said. “ But I 
didn’t start in time. Where did they get you? ” 

Now she told me, “ They took me out of my 
room by the back way.” 

I held to her but differently — oh, entirely 
differently — from my hold of her in that Sen¬ 
cort room. For I knew not only that she’d not 
been' in that scheme, not only that she’d gone 
there to warn Teverson, as she said, but also I 
knew she’d nothing to do with that blow on my 
medulla oblongata at Cheron Street. 

“ Vine’s doing this, I suppose,” I whispered. 

“ Yes.” 

“ He sent me both those telegrams? ” 

“ No; only the second; I came on, as I wired 
you. He grabbed me when I arrived and threw 
you the second wire. I didn’t see the street till 
he was through with you.” 


I HEAR OF THE GLASS ROOM 255 

“ What’d he do to you? ” 

“ Me? Oh, he was all right about me, then.” 

“ He didn’t hurt you at all? ” 

She knew what I meant and replied, “ He did 
not! Christina saw to that.” 

“ Oh, she’s back with him? ” 

“ Umhm. That’s why she saw to it.” 

“All right,” I said; and kept hold of her. 
My property, she was; mine. 

“ You’re forgiving me? ” I said. 

“ For what? ” 

“ Down on Wall Street; and what I did after 
I’d been hit.” 

“ Oh, that was you, Steve, just you.” 

Pretty soon, then, I asked her, “ What’s Vine’s 
idea for us now? ” 

You’d have thought I would have asked that 
the first thing. But question any doctor; in¬ 
quire how patients act when they know there’s 
no hope for them. Do they say right away, 
“ What is it, doctor? ” They do not; they say, 
“Lovely weather; and what a view from this 
window! ” 

Doris was like a doctor in that, when I got 
around to asking her, she did her stalling, too; 
but finally she told me, “ Well, I guess for us it’s 
the ‘ glass room ’, ” 


XX 


DORIS AND I ARE TAKEN TO IT. 

WHEN she said “ for us/’ I got another thrill 
there in the dark, and right away I got quite the 
opposite when she said “ the glass room.” 

I had not heard of it before. No; that was 
the premiere for the phrase with me; but it was 
one of those phrases which carry their own con¬ 
notation; and this was decidedly an uncom¬ 
fortable one. 

“ What’s the 1 glass room ’ ? ” I asked her. 

“ Never mind,” she said, and it was like a 
mother to a child. You’ve heard something of 
the sort when a visitor let slip, before the chil¬ 
dren, a remark about the feature atrocity in the 
morning paper. “ Never mind,” Doris said 
again to me. 

“ Well, I’m grown,” I said. “ And since I’m 
apparently a candidate for it, why not tell me — 
unless you prefer to have it come as a complete 
surprise to me? ” 

“ Don’t!” she asked me; and we stood in 
silence in the dark. 


DORIS AND I ARE TAKEN TO IT 257 

“ You’ve explored the cavern, I suppose be* 
tween three and five,” I said, starting up the 
small talk again. 

“ Yes.” 

“ It runs to solid walls, I take it? ” 

“ Very solid.” 

“ Nothing like a trap door in the floor, by any 
chance? ” 

“ Not by any.” 

“ Now a noise would probably be one of the 
worst advised projects possible, don’t you 
think? ” 

“ It wouldn’t change the end at all,” Doris 
said, “ and would only put us worse off now. 
They’d tie and gag us — or else let us yell for 
their amusement.” 

“ Of course some one’s just outside.” 

“ Of course.” 

We were silent again and I listened. “ Yet 
we don’t know. I hear nobody now.” 

I threw my weight against the panels, brac¬ 
ing my feet as firmly as I could. The wood 
creaked but did not break. Hearing some one 
at the other side, I relaxed and the door opened. 

“Who’s so crazy to come out?” one of the 
normals said to me. “ Come along.” He 
punched me with his pistol. I came. 


KEEBAN 


258 

He slammed the door on Doris and threw 
over the bolt. Without another word to me, but 
guiding me by punches of his automatic against 
my side, he herded me into another closet, 
equipped with a heavy door. Here I was alone. 

Standing alone in the dark, I wondered why 
they put me in with Doris, first; and I won¬ 
dered now that it was too late to ask her again, 
exactly what “ the glass room ” was. Then my 
two perplexities partly answered each other. 

She, having been caught doing a “ double 
cross ” on her crowd, knew what was going to 
happen to her; and they put me with her so she 
would tell me and so, while I waited, I would 
have the benefit of my own anticipations of the 
“ glass room.” 

Suggestive sort of name, wasn’t it? 

I stood in that closet, or sat on the floor, for 
three hours. It turned out to be not yet nine 
when the normals removed me. Of course it 
seemed several times longer; many more than 
three hours’ thoughts went through my head. 

“ Ready for the ‘ glass room ’ now? ” one of 
the normals said to me. 

I said something in the manner of “ Go 
ahead.” 

u Come along then,” he said; and prodded 


DORIS AND I ARE TAKEN TO IT 259 

me as before. But this time, as they were taking 
me out, they did a little more. They tied my 
hands and stuffed my mouth full of cotton and 
bound it in. After they had prodded me into 
their car, they threw a rope around my feet and 
pulled it tight. 

I did not see Doris at all, then. I had no idea 
whether they already had attended to her, or 
whether she was next or whether they were leav¬ 
ing her behind. 

In the car, the curtains were down; I couldn’t 
see out, yet I had some idea of where we were 
going. First we headed east, running with the 
long blocks, then we swung to the right and went 
with the short squares, crossing many streets and 
stopping many times at traffic signals. 

That was one of the queerest features of the 
ride, to feel that the car, carrying me bound and 
gagged to the glass room, was halting, with the 
most punctilious, to obey the street regulations. 

The three normals said little to me and not 
much more to each other. Altogether it was a 
quiet ride and, in itself, uneventful. We turned 
east again after our run south and I knew that 
we were in that bulge of the city below the 
numbered streets. 

We went on to a bridge, — the Williamsburg 


260 


KEEBAN 


bridge, I thought; and when we were off it, and 
had taken a couple of turns, I lost all reckoning. 
I wasn’t particularly up on Long Island City 
and Brooklyn. 

When we reached our terminus, they threw 
the noose from my feet and prodded me to pre¬ 
cede them from the car. Others were there 
waiting, — other normals, I mean. I saw no¬ 
body else in my fix. We were between two 
large, dark buildings which seemed to compose 
a factory of some sort. I saw corrugated, sheet- 
steel shutters covering the windows, not only 
next to the ground but upon the upper floors. 
The factory unit to the right communicated 
with the one to the left by a bridge-of-sighs effect 
about twenty feet from the ground. The whole 
place had a shut and deserted look which was 
intensified by the distance of the nearest night 
lamps. 

There was a dark, overcast sky. I remember 
glancing up to get a glimpse of a star or so, if I 
could; but nothing like one was showing. So I 
took a long deep breath of the outside air, as the 
next best thing to do, before following some of 
the normals, and preceding others, into an aper¬ 
ture which developed a door somewhat farther 
along. 


DORIS AND I ARE TAKEN TO IT 261 


We were in a large, wide space of a character 
familiar to me; it was bare of furniture, except 
for many long, low tables, several chairs and 
stools and, here and there, a desk. Chutes 
slanted down upon the tables. These were for 
the delivery of goods in the days when the fac¬ 
tory was working; here the shipments had been 
made up and dispatched. 

I saw all this in the yellow glow from a 
couple of old electric bulbs in fixtures on the 
sides of the great supporting columns which 
stood in rows through the room. Although 
these lights proved that current was coming into 
the building, the state of this shipping floor was 
conclusive that the factory was shut down. It 
was an easy trick, I knew, for one of the normals 
to “ cut in ” the current which had been turned 
off by the company. 

Several empty boxes, ready for goods which 
never slid down the chutes, were piled up on one 
side and I passed near enough to read the sten¬ 
cilling on their ends. 

“ Stamby-Temke Chemical Company,” they 
said. 

I had a dim notion of the name. It seemed to 
me that this was one of the plants which had 
boomed during the war and afterwards had con- 


262 


KEEBAN 


tinued, with the idea that German dyes and 
chemicals would not again compete in the 
American market. They had quoted us color¬ 
ing matter and synthetic fruit flavors; but we 
weren’t interested. 

The normals walked me upon the broad plat¬ 
form of a freight elevator. I saw by the city 
license framed on its side that this was operated 
by electric power. A normal moved a lever and 
we slowly rose past one dark floor, two, three, 
four. Upon the fifth, we stepped out. Several 
lights were burning here and better ones than 
below, — bright Mazdas, these were. We were 
in another wide room but this had rows of desks 
and work benches; big bottles and carboys 
gleamed from shelves. The glass in the win¬ 
dows reflected the lights like mirrors, for they 
were black behind, with steel shutters tight 
screening them. None of this light escaped. 

One of the normals jerked the binder from 
before my mouth and I coughed out the cotton 
without hindrance. From this floor, no shout 
could escape; nor could a shot be heard outside. 

They watched me but let me alone. I sat on 
the edge of a desk and looked about at them. 
Just now, they were doing nothing. 

It was plain, of course, that they had com- 


DORIS AND I ARE TAKEN TO IT 263 

plete control of this empty plant. Probably 
Stamby-Temke had a watchman but the normals 
either overpowered him, terrorized him or 
bought him over. Perhaps he was one of them, 
who had applied for the job for the purpose of 
obtaining these buildings for their use. Evi¬ 
dently they were quite at home here. 

They were so at ease, indeed, that they must 
be sure that no one would disturb them. I 
attempted a pose “ at ease ” but with my hands 
tied back of me, and more particularly with the 
feeling I had, I certainly made a poor pretense 
at it. 

Something was going to happen to me here, I 
knew; and I was going to have nothing to say 
about it. The occurrence would be of that sort 
which precedes the finding of a body in a 
deserted building. 

You’ve read in the papers, as I had, how the 
vice-president of the John Doe Company, mak¬ 
ing an inspection of a disused building prior to 
reopening it, was shocked to come upon the body 
of a man, evidently dead for some time. His 
clothing and so on; marks of identification and 
so on. The police state that the man undoubt¬ 
edly met a violent end and prior to his death and 
so on. It is evident that the man was brought 


KEEBAN 


264 

there by several others who used the building 
for — well, here I was to find out for what these 
normals used this building. 

The elevator, which had descended after de¬ 
positing us, reappeared with another group of 
normals and with a girl. Doris! Yes; there 
she was! If they had tied and gagged her while 
bringing her here, they had loosed her again; 
she stepped off the elevator and moved a little 
away from the normals. Not even her hands 
were tied; but she was in the same fix I was; 
that was clear. 

They were letting her go to see what she 
would try to do, as they had let me. I got up 
from my seat on the desk; she came toward me. 
“ Hello,” I said; and she said the same and sat 
in a chair near me. I slumped down again on 
the edge of the desk. 

There was an average of eight of the normals 
about us in that big office; some kept sifting in 
and out, from and to a farther room, where there 
appeared to be somebody or something particu¬ 
larly important. 

Doris glanced that way several times and 
they watched her; I watched her, too. She ap¬ 
peared alert and on edge with eyes bright and 


DORIS AND I ARE TAKEN TO IT 265 

with lips thin and tight; but she didn’t show 
fright. 

I’m not sure what I showed but I know what 
I felt. I was dull, not alert like her. One sort 
of nature seems to dull itself when in for what 
it can’t prevent; that was mine. I guessed that 
the “ glass room ” was over in that farther end 
of this floor. 

During those three hours alone in that closet, 
I had spent a good deal of thought on the “ glass 
room”; and, knowing that the scheme at the 
Sencort Trust had employed gas, naturally I set 
to fitting gas in the arrangements of the “ glass 
room.” So now that I had seen this was a chemi¬ 
cal factory, I was sure I was right. They had 
some ritual with gas for Doris and me. A rather 
elaborate ritual, if one were to judge by the time 
it took them to make ready. Or perhaps they 
were waiting for somebody. 

A telephone instrument stood on the desk 
beside me. The last time I’d sat down, I had 
placed myself next it. Now I didn’t take it up; 
I merely moved my hand and lifted the receiver 
from the hook. 

One of the normals saw me and made no 
move. He had no reason for worry; there was 
no response in the wire; the circuit was dead. 


266 


KEEBAN 


“ Know anything to do? ” I asked Doris in a 
whisper. 

“ Not now,” she replied. 

The normals did not care; they did not even 
come closer to hear what we said. 

“ This is the place, I suppose,” I continued. 

She nodded. 

“ What’s your idea for later? ” I asked her. 

“ I’ll have it — later,” she said. 

So that was it. She had no better plan than 
I who had none at all. 

Just then Jerry came in. That is, I thought 
at first he was Jerry. My heart leaped at the 
sight of him; physically it leaped; I felt it 
pounding in me. I thought he was Jerry, you 
see. I thought he had come here as Keeban; I 
believed he was playing the part of Keeban but 
that really he was Jerry who had come to try to 
save me. 


XXI 


DORIS ENTERS THE GLASS ROOM. 

YOU see, I had remained sure up to this time 
that there were two of them. Now and then, for 
short periods, I had questioned myself about it; 
but always my certainty of Jerry, as somebody 
distinct from Keeban, won over my doubt. I 
would never grant that Jerry, my brother, could 
be guilty of what Keeban had done. 

Then, if they were only one, why would Jerry 
warn me and send me to prevent the plan of 
Keeban, as he had sent me to the Sencort Trust? 

“Here’s Jerry!” I said to myself, and that 
jump of my heart encouraged me. “ He’s play¬ 
ing Keeban. He’s come for me.” 

The normals nodded or gazed at him; he gave 
hardly a glance at them. He looked to Doris 
and came over to me. 

My pulse had stopped jumping then, when I 
saw him closer. “ He’s not Jerry! ” I warned 
myself. “ He’s Keeban! ” And then my senses 
did another roundabout. “ He’s Keeban and 


268 


KEEBAN 


Jerry, too! ” For here was a body which I was 
sure was Jerry’s and some one else possessed it. 
That some one must be the soul we’d called 
Keeban — Jerry and I. Here was Keeban 
who’d robbed Dorothy Crewe and thrown her 
in the street; here was Keeban who had shot 
Win Scofield for his insurance and had knocked 
me on the head when I called at Cheron Street; 
here was Keeban who had tried to kill, by poison 
gas, Strathon, Geroud and Teverson and the 
Sencort directors in their room. And here — in 
the sense, at least, that I felt him physically 
present — was Jerry, who had been brother of 
mine for twenty-five years. And his present 
purpose was to finish me. 

“ Well, Steve,” he said, “You did a good 
job.” 

“ All right, I guess,” I replied. 

“ Damn good,” he granted to me. “ You got 
any idea of what you beat me out of? ” 

“ No,” I said, doing my best to stand up to 
him; and while I talked to him, I thought, “ He 
warned me. He told me to do it. That wasn’t 
Keeban, of course. Jerry had the body then. 
Jerry must come into him at times. Then Jerry 
knows and goes horrified at what Keeban does. 
Jerry himself sent me that warning to try to stop 


DORIS ENTERS GLASS ROOM 269 

him. He did the same in the killing of Win 
Scofield.” 

He went on talking, “ You beat me out of 
more than you’d make in the bean business if 
you lived as many more years as you’re going to 
live minutes. You like that girl over there? ” 

I didn’t reply to that; but he went on as if I 
had. 

“ Good you do. She’s traveling right along 
with you. Plenty of space for two in the old 
glass room. Now Stenewisc, he was simply a 
fool.” 

“ Stenewisc, who made the gas? ” I asked him. 
I was trying to keep him talking for the gen¬ 
eral reason that every minute gained was another 
minute lived; and besides, below everything else 
in my mind, was the idea that something might 
turn this body back from Keeban to Jerry again. 
I got to figuring like this: 

“ Years ago, when we were at college, he 
started being Keeban for a couple of short peri¬ 
ods which confused him afterwards. He was 
Jerry nearly all the time. Then he stopped turn¬ 
ing into Keeban until that night of the Spar¬ 
lings’ dance. He became Keeban for a time, 
then he was Jerry again when he came home to 
talk to me, after which he went back to being 


KEEBAN 


270 

Keeban. He has stayed Keeban most of the time 
since, especially through that Scofield business; 
but once or twice he became Jerry. But now, 
except when he sent those two notes to me, he’s 
been Keeban all the time.” 

“ Stenewisc, he never had any sense,” he went 
on to me. “ He had the gas during the war. 
But would he sell it to the army or to the Eng¬ 
lish or the French or, if he didn’t like that side, 
would he sell to the other? He would not. He 
wouldn’t help any government anywhere; he 
wouldn’t help a government even to wipe out 
the rest. He was set to do the wiping himself, 
personally. He had his big idea.” 

I kept quiet; and he stood close. This was 
like Jerry himself, this impulse to talk on. 

“ He figured he could croak everybody — 
give him a little more time and plenty of gas. 
Everybody in New York, anyway.” Keeban 
laughed. “ Lot of good that would do. Get 
up! ” he told me. 

I got up. 

“ Get up! ” he said to Doris; and she arose. 

The normals formed before us and behind; 
and so we started to march to the glass room. 

There was an ordinary wood and plaster par¬ 
tition first which set off another large room at 


DORIS ENTERS GLASS ROOM 271 

the end of this floor. The usual employment of 
this place was plain enough, even to me with 
only college course knowledge of chemical 
matters. Here were the laboratories for experi¬ 
mentation and research where a commercial 
firm, such as Stamby-Temke, would keep a 
covey of chemists testing their products, analyz¬ 
ing the goods of competitors and making experi¬ 
ments to improve their own formulae for colors, 
caustics, preservatives, antiseptics* poisons, sol¬ 
vents, reagents and what not. 

Most of these tests would be simple enough 
and involve no danger to any one; but some 
would generate gases, poisonous or otherwise 
noxious, which should not be allowed in an open 
room; therefore the firm had installed, at the 
end of this laboratory, a special compartment 
which was, beyond any doubt, “ the glass room.” 

Its outer wall was not of glass; rather, it was 
not all glass, though there were two windows in 
it. No blinds were drawn before them but they 
were black from the steel shutters outside. The 
other three walls were of glass from floor to 
ceiling and, as the normals brought us nearer, I 
could see that the glass was heavy, clear plate 
such as is used in show windows and that it was 
carefully and evenly joined in steel framing. 


KEEBAN 


272 

Where the glass met the frame, and about the 
single, glass door, the joints were caulked and 
sealed, making the place air-tight and gas-tight, 
undoubtedly. There was a way of ventilating it 
without using the windows, I saw; for cords 
communicated with ceiling traps. The traps 
were open now; the blackness above was the 
darkness of the sky. One set of cords hung in¬ 
side the room, another hung just outside the 
glass. 

I guessed that, when Stamby-Temke had the 
building, the chemists who worked in the glass 
room used the inner set when they wished to 
clear the air of their cabinet; the outer cords 
must be for emergencies, in case the chemists in 
the outer laboratory saw the experimenters in 
the cabinet overcome; then the rescuers could 
open the ceiling before going into the glass room. 

The fact that the traps now were up suggested 
that the cabinet recently had been used. For 
whom? I wondered. I was sure of the purpose 
of the cabinet. Here was the place of punish¬ 
ment and of discipline. 

Keeban strode into the glass room and pulled 
the cords. The ceiling closed and he came out. 
His normals stood about him, grinning. They 
took on an additional detachment of manner 


DORIS ENTERS GLASS ROOM 273 

which I didn’t like at all; it was detachment 
from us — from Doris and me — that I mean. 

She was keeping her nerve and she was stand¬ 
ing steady. She was gazing into the glass room 
with a look which made me think that, though 
she’d known about this cabinet, she had never 
actually seen it before. 

I haven’t mentioned its furnishings. The 
room had a bench with nothing on it; there was 
a table in the middle of the cabinet. Nothing 
was on that either, but from its position, and 
from the way that Doris and the normals looked 
at that, it had a much more menacing suggestion. 

It was a narrow table, no wider than a couch; 
it was about the length of a couch. And some¬ 
how, though it was perfectly flat and hard, it 
suggested a couch. At least, I imagined myself 
spread out upon it. The reason I fancied this 
was sinjple. I was sure that they meant to put 
me into that cabinet; and the only place they 
could put me and tie me safely would be to bind 
me to that table. 

Then they would pump in Stenewisc’s gas — 
his KX, which so competently had accounted 
for Costrelman and his butler and for the four 
guinea pigs which, but for me, might have been 
Lord Strathon and M. Geroud and Sencort and 


KEEBAN 


274 

Teverson. But for Doris and me, I mean; for 
I knew — and Keeban and his normals knew — 
that if I had failed to warn Teverson, Doris was 
there to do it. Consequently, we were to get the 
gas now; and we were not to get it simply, but 
impressively as a part of a ceremony of punish¬ 
ment and discipline. 

For Doris had done the double cross; she had 
“ speiled ” and “ spouted ”; and not only had 
she spoiled the biggest job this crowd ever had 
“ on ” but by her squeal or her willingness to 
squeal had made every man here a candidate for 
the electric chair. That was their judgment and 
their sentence against her. 

It was not a fair judgment, nor a fair sentence, 
even from their own point of view, I thought. 
It was strange that, standing there and staring 
into the glass room, I angered at this more than 
anything else, that their sentence of her wasn’t 
fair. She never could have agreed to mix in 
murder; she had mixed with them only for coun¬ 
terfeiting, for her shoving of “ the queer ”; and 
through that contact, she had learned of the plot 
to kill which she could not stand for. 

Other flashes of comprehension came to me 
there, too. Keeban was fast developing, I un¬ 
derstood. He’d started, so far as I knew, only 


DORIS ENTERS GLASS ROOM 275 

with robbery; then he’d run to shooting of old 
Win Scofield and, from that, to his attempt at 
the simultaneous gassing of the group appointed 
to gather in the Sencort directors’ room. Kee- 
ban had tried to carry Doris with him from 
counterfeiting into killing; he had failed. He 
must have been carrying some, or most, of these 
normals with him from smaller offenses into 
those which threatened “ the chair.” 

He could not simply have happened upon a 
group of normals going the exact gait he was 
going; he had to speed up some of them and 
keep them with him and impress them with the 
certainty of something worse than “ the chair ”, 
if any failed him. So he was giving “ the glass 
room ” to Doris and me, not merely for our pun¬ 
ishment, but for an example to the others. And 
more of the others were arriving now. I heard 
footsteps and voices, a girl’s voice among them 
and her laugh. I turned about. Shirley, Win 
Scofield’s widow, had come with two young men 
beside her. 

The sight of her brought me images of recol¬ 
lection. How I had seen her sing in her house 
that night before the shooting! How, like a 
cabaret Recamier, she had received me after her 
husband was dead! How I witnessed her dance 


KEEBAN 


276 

at the Flamingo Feather that night she had 
stabbed at her partner, Keeban! 

Sometimes, since, I had doubted the authen¬ 
ticity of my own witnessing that night; I won¬ 
dered if, actually, she had tried, in that sudden, 
swift dart of the dagger, to kill Keeban, her part¬ 
ner. Now I wondered that no longer. 

She came in smiling; but her smile was too 
like Doris’s when she now smiled at me. For a 
moment I thought that Shirley was with us; she, 
also, was to be a guest of the glass room. Then 
I realized that this was not so. She had come 
only to see us entertained within the glass. I 
realized that it was for her we had been waiting. 
She had come but not of her own will. She had 
been brought to see this entertainment which 
was planned for her. 

I got a glimpse of Keeban’s face; and there I 
saw a leer which seemed to say: 

“ You stabbed at me. I let you get away with 
it. But watch your • step. Now see what I 
can do.” 

She kept on smiling. She looked at Doris but 
didn’t speak. She didn’t even nod at Doris, in¬ 
deed ; and Doris took no heed of her. She gazed 
at me, did Shirley Scofield, — Christina. And 
she smiled at me as she had at Keeban, and she 


DORIS ENTERS GLASS ROOM 277 

smiled at the normals, too. That smile meant 
nothing; no more than their grins in reply to her. 

Keeban spoke aloud. “ Everybody’s here.” 
It seemed to be a prearranged signal. Two of 
the normals came up to me and took my arms; 
two more placed themselves in position sim¬ 
ilarly to escort Doris. 

“What’s the big rush, boys?” said Keeban 
then. “ Didn’t they show us something new 
down on Wall Street? Don’t we show it back 
to them? ” 

He laughed; and how he looked like Jerry 
when he laughed! But he didn’t sound like 
Jerry. Not at all. That other person possessed 
the body. 

“ Where are they? ” he asked the nearest of 
his normals. 

“ Oh! ” said the normal, remembering. “ In 
there.” 

“ Get them,” said Keeban. 

The fellow stepped to a locker at the side of 
the room; he stooped, and, reaching in, he 
brought out a pair of white rabbits in one hand, 
another pair hung by their ears from his other 
fist. 

“ Rabbits,” said Keeban, with a sort of play 
at apology to Doris and me. “ I know you got 


278 KEEBAN 

guinea pigs; but rabbits do just as well and they 
show better.” 

He took them from the man who held them 
and he stepped again into the glass room and 
tossed the four white rabbits upon the table. 
Carefully he closed the door when he came out. 

He went to the end of the cabinet where now 
I noticed, when he touched it, a thin pipe with a 
cock right against the glass. He twisted the 
cock and he returned to us. 

The end of the pipe pierced the glass, I saw; 
but now that the cock was turned, nothing vis¬ 
ible came from it. Stenewisc’s gas was color¬ 
less and odorless, I remembered. I did not ex¬ 
pect to smell it through the glass of the cabinet; 
but I could not help expecting the rabbits, on 
the table there, to show some alarm. They dis¬ 
cerned nothing threatening, however. 

Timidly they tried this end of the table and 
now that. They hopped about, nosing each 
other, naturally enough. Nothing at all seemed 
to be happening. Then a lethargy crept over 
them. They did not sleep; they remained 
awake but became slower and slower in their 
motions. Yet nothing alarmed them; they 
seemed to sense nothing at all but the difficulty 
of motion. They nosed up, seeming to search 


DORIS ENTERS GLASS ROOM 279 

for this intangible thing which was restraining 
them. They drooped, as though pressed down; 
but they remained awake and gave not a squeal 
nor a quiver of pain. 

Surely it was painless, as well as invisible and 
intangible, too, — this amazing death from 
Stenewisc’s gas. 

“ No trouble at all, you see,” said Keeban to 
me. “ You never know it.” 

He knew how horrible that gradual, invisible 
death was; a shot or a knife, or anything sud¬ 
den, would have been ten times more merciful. 
It’s a strange thing to say, but I’m sure that pain 
— some pain, at least — would have made it 
less terrible. It was uncanny, you see. 

“ They’d never have suspected it,” he spoke 
again to me. “ They’d each thought the rest 
were getting thick in the head and nobody 
would’ve tried to get up from the table — till 
they couldn’t.” 

He was speaking of the four, who would have 
been in the Sencort directors’ room, if I hadn’t 
interfered; and his words, and this sight of the 
rabbits before me, made me see how the Eng¬ 
lishman and the Frenchman and Teverson and 
Sencort would have gone, without feeling, with- 


280 KEEBAN 

out knowing, with nothing really to alarm them 
till too late. 

“ Great stuff,” said Keeban again and not to 
me but to the normals. “ We’ll make it worth 
millions yet — millions! We’ll get the next 
bunch and then sell Wall Street the gas — at our 
own price! Boys, the curtain raiser’s over.” 

For the rabbits had drooped into death. 
There was not a mark nor a twist on them to 
show it. Keeban shut off the gas, where he had 
turned it on; he pulled the cords to open the 
ceiling. 

“ Perfectly safe in two minutes,” he assured 
Doris and me. “ It’s light; the stuff rises.” 

Doris and I looked at each other. What had 
been done had been planned of course to break 
our nerve. I can’t say what cracks showed in 
mine, nor how much satisfaction I was giving 
them. I can say that what she was supplying 
them was mighty small. 

We had two minutes, one of us or both of us; 
and she wasn’t for wasting them. Nor was I 
thinking of things far away. I couldn’t; and I 
didn’t want to. 

I felt my flashes of home; of my mother and 
my father. I felt flashes of Jerry, as he used to 
be when he was my brother. To see him here 


DORIS ENTERS GLASS ROOM 281 

beside me now stopped these old sensations. My 
mind brought to me the night he’d come and 
told me how “ Keeban ” must have taken away 
Dorothy Crewe; it brought me to the police 
station where, that same night, he broke away; 
it brought me to the Flamingo Feather where I 
danced with Doris, calling her Cleopatra. It 
brought me to Caldon’s, where I happened on 
her “shoving the queer”; it took me to the 
Blackstone and the train and to that supper with 
her again. It took me to that closet where I’d 
kissed her, as I had never kissed any girl before. 

Here we were, caught together, with Keeban 
going once more into the glass room. He went 
himself and picked up the rabbits and flung 
them at our feet on the floor. 

“ How about it now? ” he said to me. 
“What’s the order? The lady first? ” 

I swore at him. He had my nerve, you see. I 
swore and strained at the cords on my hands. A 
lot of good it did me. He laughed. 

“ All right, Steve! ” said Doris to me. “ All 
right!” Quickly but calmly she said it. 
Calmly is not the word. It doesn’t do at all. 
No word would. “ All right, Steve! ” 

“All right, Doris!” I said in reply. Of 


KEEBAN 


282 

course nothing was right, except one thing; and 
that was whatever held her to me. 

“ Margaret’s my name,” she told me; and she 
touched me. They let her; they weren’t hold¬ 
ing her just then. 

“ Margaret,” I said. “ Thanks. I like that 
name.” 

Keeban nodded to his normals; and they took, 
and tied her. Then he, himself, carried her in. 

They tied her to the table, much as I had seen 
they would. They came out and closed the door. 
He twisted that cock on the pipe; I saw his wrist 
go around and around. 

I stood and stared and waited. There was 
just one thing that I might try; and it was not 
yet time for that. 

Doris — Margaret — lay on her back, each 
wrist and each ankle looped to a leg of the table. 
She lay looking up at the closed ceiling, not mov¬ 
ing except for the rise and fall of her bosom 
with breathing. She had tried her cords and 
found the uselessness of struggle; so she lay and 
waited. 

I watched her and waited for my moment. 

I would have known it was not much to wait for, 
if I had thought it out. But you don’t think out 
affairs like that; when there is only one thing to 


DORIS ENTERS GLASS ROOM 283 

do, you have to take a chance on whatever it is. 
So I stood, with Keeban beside me and Christina 
a few feet away and the eleven normals beyond 
us and between and I watched the girl on the 
table breathing. 

They watched her, too. Christina, Shirley 
Scofield, — with what sort of feelings? And 
the normals about us, what were they thinking, 
too? I didn’t even try to wonder about Jerry 
who had become Keeban and who was doing this 
thing. 

My hands, tied together, grasped the top of 
the back of a chair against which I leaned; and 
my muscles went tight to raise it and, spinning, 
to swing it upon him and kill him. Yet I knew 
I would not do that; I might knock him down; 
that was all. It would not help my girl at all. 

She half turned her head toward me and then, 
quickly, she faced to the ceiling again. She 
wanted to look at me, I thought; and then she 
had thought it must seem like an appeal to me, 
which I could not bear when I could not help 
her. 

I held on to the back of that chair and waited, 
watching her bosom rise and fall. I kept saying 
to myself something that Teverson told me. 
When Costrelman and his butler had been killed 


KEEBAN 


284 

by the gas, others in the room had been affected 
but had recovered. An under-dose was not 
deadly, therefore; that is, if this were the same 
gas. 

I could see nothing; smell nothing; sense 
nothing going on in that cabinet; but neither 
had I when the rabbits had died. 

My plan depended entirely upon time. 
There must be gas in the cabinet, but not too 
much gas, — not enough to kill my girl in there. 

She breathed more slowly, I thought; I stared 
and seemed sure of it. At the same time, Kee- 
ban began looking at me. He suspected I was 
about to act; and I did it. I lifted that heavy 
chair behind me and, spinning, I swung it 
against the glass side of the cabinet and smashed 
it through. I followed it myself and was inside, 
smashing, kicking, demolishing glass. A girl 
screamed. 

Keeban started after me; I felt — or I had 
felt — his hand grabbing me; but now his clutch 
was gone. He was away from that break in the 
glass. I heard him call and cough, “ Beat it! 
Duck! Don’t suck it in! ” Shirley, for it was 
Shirley, screamed again. 

I thought, “ He knows. A little kills. I’ve 
got it. Cleopatra, Doris, Margaret; she’s got it, 


DORIS ENTERS GLASS ROOM 285 

too.” But I had her and I hardly cared. The 
rest of them had got away. 

My smash of the glass, with Keeban’s yell — 
and more than that, his example — had given 
the start. Now shots were speeding them along. 
I didn’t know who was shooting; they were out 
of the laboratories; and still they were going 
away. 

I had that ceiling over the glass room open; I 
did that before I cut my cords. Now, by sawing 
against the glass, I freed my wrists and I had off 
Doris’s cords. 

The fight outside — still I did not know who 
was fighting — had passed from that wide room 
where the elevator was; it went farther or it 
went down. 

I got out of the glass room and around to that 
cock in the pipe which Keeban had turned. 

The valve was turned tight; no doubt about 
it; for I twisted it half a turn open and twisted 
it back again to make sure. “ He didn’t give 
you the gas!” I called to Doris. “It wasn’t 
turned on! ” 

Then he came back into the room, bloody and 
leaping; and he was Jerry! The change, which 
I’d given up hoping for, had come over him. 

“ Steve! ” he called to me. “ Steve! Come 


286 


KEEBAN 


down and see him. I’ve got him. Christina 
croaked him cold! And I’ve got him! Come 
down and see him! ” 

“ Who? ” I said; for I was shaky; and in my 
mind, then, there was only one of them. 

“ Keeban! ” he told me. “ He’s cold, down¬ 
stairs where Christina croaked him.” 


XXII 


A CROAKING AND FINIS. 

DORIS was up and she was steady. “ You 
didn’t get the gas,” Jerry was telling her. 

She said nothing to him. It was harder for 
her than for me to understand what he had 
done; yet she got it before I did. 

“ You’re Jerry Fanneal,” she said to him. 

“ That’s me.” 

He went to a window and threw up the sash 
and flung back the shutter. He fired three shots 
in the air. 

“You were here — not Harry Vine — just 
now.” 

“ He’s been cold for half an hour. That’s 
what delayed you.” 

“ What? ” 

“ Christina stopped to croak him, Harry Vine, 
Keeban. She wouldn’t take a chance.” 

He was wiping blood from his shoulder 
where he’d been hurt. I was bloody in several 
spots and Margaret was wiping that off me. 


288 


KEEBAN 


“Come along,” said Jerry: and he took us 
downstairs. And there he lay — himself in 
duplicate — dead on the floor. He had been 
stabbed through the throat. 

I bent over him and, with Jerry himself bend¬ 
ing beside me, still I got a shock at seeing him. 
“ Two of you,” I said over and over. “ Two of 
you.” I was still shaken, you see. 

“ Two of us! ” said Jerry, and he touched that 
body so identical with his own. “ The difference 
between us was this: when he was turned loose, 
he walked the wrong way across the Lincoln 
Park grass.” 

“Two of you!” I said and straightened, my 
arm on Jerry’s shoulder. “See here! When we 
were boys, with our beds side by side, what was 
the book you kept underneath to read in the 
mornings? ” 

“ The Wonder Clock,” he told me. 

“ And the story you liked best of all? ” 

“ 1 One Good Turn Deserves Another.’ ” 

“Jerry!” I cried to him; and I stood there 
holding to him, staring down at Keeban. 

“ I didn’t kill him,” Jerry said to me. “ I 
came here to get him; I meant to bag him. 
Christina came with him but she worked with 
me. She knew I was here. She meant to kill 


A CROAKING AND FINIS 289 

him. I didn’t know that till after I’d stepped 
out and went at him. She gave him the steel; 
she wanted to croak him. She thought he’d get 
her, if she didn’t.” 

Doris said: “ He would have. Where’s she 
now? ” 

“Gone,” said Jerry; and Doris asked no 
more. 

Jerry ceased to stare down at Keeban. “We 
were twins, I suppose; that must be it; and he 
walked the wrong way across Lincoln Park. 
That was all there was to it.” His mind kept 
going back to that. “ Steve,” he said to me. 

“What?” I asked; I thought again he was 
turned to philosophy; but he said, 

“ Upstairs, you swung your chair hard, old 
top. I thought you’d never do it.” 

“ I see now,” I replied. “ You were waiting 
for me to do that.” 

He nodded. “You had to make the move; 
then I could do the rest. You got to it just 
in time, old fellow! ” 

“In time?” I said stupidly. “The pipe 
wasn’t turned on.” 

“ Yet you were just in time; in a minute more, 
they’d got wise that it wasn’t.” 


KEEBAN 


290 

We heard men downstairs now. “ Who’s 
that? ” I said. 

“ Must be the bulls; his gang,” Jerry glanced 
at Keeban again, “ got out; all that will ever get. 
Well, come on, bulls; a lot you can hurt me 
now! ” 

He looked up from his brother and straight¬ 
ened ; and I felt for him perhaps one thousandth 
of his relief from what had been on him since 
that night he came into my room, after the 
Sparlings’ dance, and said Keeban had come and 
gone with Dorothy Crewe. 

I put my hand on him while we waited, Doris 
and he and I, for the approaching steps of the 
bulls. 

“ You can go back to anybody now; you can 
go back to Dorothy Crewe.” 

“ I’ll not go back,” he told me. 

“ You wouldn’t,” I said. 

“ Are you going back, Steve? ” 

“ Where? ” I asked. 

“To the bean business and — your Dorothy 
Crewe?” 

“ I don’t know about going back to the bean 
business,” I said. “ And I never had any Dorothy 
Crewe; but if I had I wouldn’t go back to her. 
No; I know that! ” 


A CROAKING AND FINIS 291 

The bulls came on us. We were in the light, 
but they flashed their own lanterns in our faces. 
“Up with ’em! ” They had our hands over our 
heads at the points of their pistols. And when 
they saw Jerry, they felt sure of a haul. 

“ Here’s him! ” they called to those behind. 
“ Here’s him who’s wanted from Chi to the 
Street! Here’s him!” 

“Take a look at the floor,” Jerry advised 
them. “ And when you take me along, have 
him with us.” 

“How’s this, Mr. Fanneal? How’s this?” 
And then I reaped one advantage of my previ¬ 
ous notoriety. They knew me; and there, with 
Jerry beside me and Keeban on the floor, I tried 
to tell them. 

Of course, they took us to the station for the 
second telling, which was not the last by any 
means. They held Jerry that night; but they 
did not hold Margaret and me. Of her, they 
knew nothing; and what I knew of her, I did not 
tell them. 

If I told them all the truth about her, one sec¬ 
tion of this truth ought to make up for the 
other; her trying to warn Teverson, and taking 
the risk she ran, surely was full compensation 
for her passing “ the queer.” I felt that; but 


KEEBAN 


292 

not being certain that others would so judge, I 
kept to myself what I knew. And I kept her 
to myself, too. 

I had her in a cab; and this was no stray taxi, 
you may be sure. This was certain to go where 
I ordered it; and the number I gave was that of 
my friend on the Avenue. 

“ We can both go there and stay,” I said. 
“ That’s one use for friends.” 

“ No,” said Doris. “ Not for me.” 

“ Oh, yes,” I said; and, being alone with her 
in the back of that taxi, I firmly and forcibly 
held her. Also I kissed her, several times. 

“ Don’t!” She fought with me; and furi¬ 
ously, too. 

“ I love you,” I repeated to her. “ And you 
love me. God knows why, but you kissed me in 
that closet; and you-” 

She told me then and there that none of that 
counted. She had thought we were going to be 
killed, you see, or she never would have shown 
any interest in me. Now we weren’t killed, she 
said; and certainly that was true. We’d have to 
go back to our own lines, me to the bean business 
and she to “shoving the queer.” 

“You can’t do that,” I told her. 

“ Why not? ” she came back at me. 


A CROAKING AND FINIS 293 

“ You’ve no more of the queer to shove. Your 
father’s taken.” 

“ And you’re glad of that! ” she accused me. 

“ I’m not glad! ” I denied. “ I’d do anything 
to free him.” 

“You wouldn’t shove the queer with me!” 
she retorted. 

“ Didn’t I do it — just about?” 

“ But you didn’t want to. You didn’t like it! ” 

“ I never liked anything so much as that trip 
on the train, except when I had you later ” 

“Well, that’s over now!” she said. 

“ I guess not. You and I have just started! ” 

“ We’ve not . . . ” 

That’s how we argued in that cab. I was 
wild about her; she did love me; and after a 
while I made her remember it. Naturally we 
had quite a time; we’d just been under rather a 
strain together. 

I took her to my friend’s that night; and the 
second day I took her to the Church Around the 
Corner and married her. I waited till the sec¬ 
ond day so Jerry could be best man. 

Jerry has not yet gone back to the bean busi¬ 
ness ; I think he never will return. One of many 
results of his finding Keeban is that Jerry found 


KEEBAN 


294 

his mother — an old woman who, when she was 
young, had twin boys one of whom wandered 
away; and for twenty-five years she has known 
only the one who turned to crime. Now she 
knows Jerry; he knows her. Naturally he’s be¬ 
wildered a bit about his future. 

I am back in the bean business; that’s where 
I belong. I’m at my desk. I’ve returned. 

But I’ve returned rather like the soldier Kip¬ 
ling sings about who returned to Hackensack 
“ but not the same.” And I’m not the same for 
a similar reason. 

“ Things ’ave transpired which made me learn, 

The size and meanin’ of the game.” 

I’ve thought about that a lot, these days. My 
parents picked up Jerry and adopted him to 
“ broaden ” me and immediately set about the 
business of making him as much like ourselves 
as possible. They succeeded to the point where 
we both would have gone through life bean mer¬ 
chants, and happy at it, but for Keeban. 

He’s the one that did things to us. 

But for him, the game would have been my 
club and golf course, the Drive, the Drake, the 
other items I’ve mentioned. 

I’d have married, I suppose, some girl with 
my exact previous notions of the game. 


A CROAKING AND FINIS 295 

Now, as I’ve mentioned, I’m married to Doris. 
And I have, I know, the best wife in the world. 
Certainly the most interesting. 

Some of the family friends, who know the 
facts, feel there is something fundamentally 
wrong with my wife. 

There is not; and there never was anything 
wrong — except counterfeiting. 

She doesn’t admit that was wrong. She con¬ 
cedes that now that she’s married to me there 
is no actual occasion for anyone in the family 
engraving a steel plate but she makes this con¬ 
cession in a way which suggests that, should 
occasion ever arise, she will not be without re¬ 
course as a breadwinner. 

The interesting part, for me, is I don’t know 
how much she means it. So I’m playing that 
bean business safe to keep the occasions down 
below and quite out of her reach. 

If one ever blows the lid off, I’ll tell you. 


THE END 






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MAY i 


0 h 

















